


In the Dark

by runrarebit



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: AU, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Timelines, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Dead Dave, Difficult Sibling Relationships, Disrespectful Sex, Dubiously Erotic asphyxiation, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Monsters in the dark, Other, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage Rape/Non-con, Pegging, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Self Destructive Behaviour, Self-Reflection, Sex nightmares containing, Sibling Bonding, Siblings trying to be better people, Slut Shaming, Something like a deal with the devil, Spanking, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, The suggestion someone is disposable, Time Travel, Underage Substance Use, Verbal Abuse, denial of autonomy, genderfluid/genderqueer/non-binary/gender non-conforming character, internalised victim blaming, nothing underage depicted in a graphic way but implied and traumatic, show canon not comic canon, unhappy fic, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-11-29 09:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 61,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18221432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runrarebit/pseuds/runrarebit
Summary: So they're back in the past, they're thirteen again, Ben is alive, Vanya doesn't remember, her siblings are suddenly treating her differently, better, and all of a sudden she and Klaus are bonding- Klaus who is still trying to be clean and sober- except things are never easy, are they? There’s their father to contend with, once more alive and at the height of his power over them, and there’s secrets, always secrets, always in danger of getting out, and after their father decides that a clean and sober Klaus is a Klaus that can resume his training Reginald Hargreeves just might not be the scariest man walking the halls of the Umbrella Academy- even if only one person can see him.The thing about Klaus is that, even trapped, in the dark, he is never alone. Never alone. Never. And the past he's been running from ever since he was a small child might just now be something he can’t escape from.FIC ON HIATUS. PART 1 FINISHED. Please read Chapter 14 Author's Note.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I binged The Umbrella Academy and then wrote this over a few days, in between working on the Star Wars fic I have going. I've never read the comics so this is only based off the show in case that's a deterrent. 
> 
> I'm not sure what you'll think of it, though I hope you like it, and I'm also not sure if I'll write more or if this'll just be a oneshot. I felt quite sorry for Klaus during the show, so of course I just made everything worse for him here. Funny that.

‘I’m too old,’ is what he tells himself, alone, in the dark, trapped. ‘Thirteen’s too old. Anyway, I’m not thirteen, I’m thirty. Thirty is definitely too old. Too old.’

There’s this horrible suspicion that’s been nagging at him since Ben punched him, but it’s not the kind he wants to think about. So, until now, for all the moments up to this moment, he doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. When he’s not thirteen, with a system un-dependent on opioids and cannabinoids and uppers and downers and alcohol and anything he can get his grubby little mitts on, it helps that getting clean sucks, that it hurts, that it burns, that it makes him feel so fucking sick he could cry, does cry, as if his tears mean anything after all these years. So, as much as it makes him want to give up, relapse, he focusses on the sickness not to think about the other stuff. He lets himself think about Dave though. Because Dave’s the main reason he wants to dry out, sober up, get clean, and he’ll stop thinking about Dave when he’s dead and at peace and it’s all over with. There’s no way he’s coming back when he dies, dies properly, no matter how much unfinished business he has. 

It’s funny when he saves Diego, when _Ben_ saves Diego, because suddenly someone in this family is seeing him and not seeing scum, worthless, deserves it, _his own fault for fucking up his own life_ , and that makes his feel real for a moment, feel good. It’s almost as good as Dave made him feel. Almost as real as Dave made him feel— and then he makes Ben manifest and doesn’t so much save the day as _help_ save everyone, and that feels better, that feels good, that feels real, he feels real, it almost feels worth it to stay sober even though he hasn’t managed to conjure Dave yet— part of him is scared though, of what’ll happen when he does. In all those thoughts he isn’t letting himself think are memories of how easy it can be to lose the world of the living, to slip into that space between where monsters dwell.

Then Five drags them all back into the past. The actual past. The real past. And— Well, he has no idea what happened to the Klaus that was, the thirteen-year-old on the verge of breaking, just a little left, a little self, a little strength not yet taken, but now _he’s_ that Klaus. He’s that Klaus. Diego’s that Diego. Allison’s that Allison. Luthor’s that Luthor. Five’s that Five. Ben’s that Ben— and so very, gloriously _alive_ , even if that means he has to share him now— and this Reginal Hargreeves is still very much alive and very much unaware of the fact that his so-called children have been spirited away and replaced by changelings from the failure of a future he brought about.

Well. They all brought about. It’s not like he doesn’t know he has his share of the blame— he hates feeling responsible for things. He always feels responsible for things. Guilt is a pervasive experience, marring every breath he has ever taken, for all the family thinks he is totally carefree. He wishes he was carefree. The only times he has ever manged a facsimile of it he was off his face on as many things as he could swallow, snort, and slip into his bloodstream. Then the edges of the world soften, smooth, and all the harshness, all the ways living hurts, becomes oh-so-sweet— if only until he comes down, and then, as always, more regret. 

They’ve been good to Vanya since they got back, all of them, him included. It’s funny. She’s the only one who is not— _aware_. She is Vanya, thirteen, the first time around, no memory of everything that happened, what she did. Five says her future self is dormant, asleep somewhere in the back of her child mind. It seems as good an explanation as any. 

It’s sad, he thinks, to see how surprised she is to be included all the time, to be asked her opinion, to have them all, even _Luther,_ even _Number One_ , stand up for her against their father. He hates it. Dear Old Dad. It’s so obvious he sees himself as surrounded by enemies; his own children, his own creations ganging up on him. And Pogo. And Grace, Mom— No, that’s unfair. Mom doesn’t see them the way dad is increasingly obviously doing so. She may be programmed to love them, but love them she does. She does. She even loves _him_. He just didn’t see it last time around. 

This time, so soon after Dave— it feels like he is ready to be loved, open to it, welcoming it— but Mom’s the only one who gives it. 

He doesn’t know what he did wrong. Things were good. They _were_ good, even in all the bad of everything, right at the end. He mattered. He _mattered_ — no. No. It was _Ben._ It was Ben wasn’t it? Ben saved Diego. Ben was the one who saved the day at the end, not him, no— well, they were his powers, but it was _Ben_ — Did he get it wrong? He must have gotten it wrong. It’s easy to get things wrong. His head’s often— it’s all a muddle. Maybe when he thought that suddenly he was real to them for a moment it was just because he could conjure Ben, be a conduit to enable them to interact with their dead sibling, and now Ben’s back. Ben’s alive. What is he?

Well, he’s nothing isn’t he? Meaningless? Nobody. And that is hard. He hates that. That makes him want to— He’s thirteen again, and there’s all that pain and anger and helplessness and hormones and being ignored, dismissed, utterly dismissed— that makes him want to be bad. Relapse. But— he won’t. He won’t. Because he wants to be better. He wants, one day, to have Dave back. He wants to be worthy of being loved, and maybe if he’s good that dear little wish that pulses and hurts in the heart of him will come true. He also wants to be good for Vanya.

He doesn’t think he was cruel to her when they were young last time— he doesn’t think he was like Luther or Allison or Diego or— he remembers feeling sorry for her but being afraid. So afraid. He was afraid every day until Ben died, then the fear changed, metamorphized, became something else, something that ate alive whatever scraps of him were left, but before then it was simpler, simple, fear of their father and what the man might do to him, and he, the coward, the most useless member of the Umbrella Academy, allowed on missions for no reason he could ever determine, had responded to the knowledge that spending too much time with Vanya, paying her too much attention, was likely to incur their daddy’s wrath— he had responded by ignoring her most of the time. In a polite enough kind of way. Except sometimes. Sometimes he was rude, but he was rude to everyone sometimes, he just thinks he was rude to Vanya less than he was rude to the rest of them. It depended. How rude he was always depended— well, on how he felt. How fucked up. And what he’d gotten into. What he’d taken.

So he’s trying very hard right now to be a good sibling to her. Except everyone is trying to be a good sibling to her, and it’s turning into something of a competition, particularly with Allison, Luther and Diego, and with them always pushing and shoving and forcing everyone else out of the way to invite her to sit with them, or to hang out with them, or to study with them, or to get her snacks, or to defend her against their father, it’s getting harder and harder to even get the chance to talk to her. Because if it’s not them it’s Five and Ben. Ben— it’s like he’s become invisible to the brother he spent the most time with. 

It makes sense, he tells himself this when he lies curled up in bed, alone aside from the ghosts clawing at the edges of his vision. He had Ben to himself for years, of course his long dead and now alive again brother now wants the chance to interact with other people, with the family he must have missed so very badly. He’s old news. Familiarity breeds contempt after all. 

He just wishes any of them cared enough that they’d notice he’s gone. Well, not _gone_. Gone would be better. 

Sobriety is a terrible thing. Particularly as his father has noticed his sudden return to a state of constant un-intoxication. Last time he was thirteen his father had already pretty much given up on training him. He was on his way out, on his way out of the family, well and truly on his way out of any esteem Reginald Hargreeves ever had for him, and soon to be out on the streets. Well, that’s probably an exaggeration. He made it to seventeen before his father packed his bags, got Pogo and his mother to round him up, then drove him out into the heart of the city, away from the Academy, and threw him out. Like rubbish.

That’s another life though, not this one. This one has him sober and clean and mind engaged at thirteen, when last time he’d already started spending as much time as he could drunk off his ass, had already found people to sell him pot for whatever he could scrounge up and trade them to pawn at home, or if he couldn’t find anything to steal then for whatever favours he could do them. Favours, nice way of putting it, heh. Even at thirteen he hadn’t had the dignity left to say no. 

There’s no point saying no when it’s going to happen anyway. In some ways it’s just less— painful, _traumatic_ to use a melodramatic word, to say _yes_ no matter what he really wants. If you say _yes_ often enough eventually you’ll convince yourself you mean it. 

He hadn’t expected it. That’s the thing. Of all the things he had expected it hadn’t been being grabbed on his way between bathroom and bed, up because he couldn’t sleep and going to take a piss was something to break the monotony of fear. Without Ben around to keep him company the ghosts are so much more frightening. 

So, he’s back in the Mausoleum. His father had rambled some nonsense about resuming his training as he’s showing some signs of _maturing into a responsible young man_. For a moment he’d felt like screaming that he’s not any of those things, but the moment passed as the door shut and locked and the dark took him.

‘I’m too old,’ he tells the darkness this time, the pale faces staring back, pleading and shouting and threatening and crying and screaming and clawing at their ghostly bodies. It’s a view into madness. It always has been. ‘I’m too old. I’m thirteen. I’m thirty. I don’t know what I am other than too old.’

It’s his own fault. The thought crystalizes across his mind. Unwanted. Such an unwanted thought. He hasn’t wanted to think it. He’s been running from it— but you can’t run forever. 

They can’t touch him unless he lets them touch him, so any time they ever touched him was because he let them, which means anything they ever did to him was _his own damn fault_. He can’t even blame his father— not that he had (he had, he really, really had) because he’d tried to pretend it didn’t happen, because it couldn’t happen, it was impossible, ghosts might torment him, but they can’t _touch_ him, except he now knows that’s a lie. A lie. It was always a lie. It’s all his own fault. _He’d lied to Luther._

‘I’m too _old,’_ he insists to the faces looking back, eyes flickering from horror to horror, searching for the one he’s so scared of. ‘I’m thirty, thirty is too old. You said—’

Oh no. Now he’s actually addressing his nightmare directly. He shouldn’t do that, talking to them, any of them, makes them stronger, makes them more _real._ ‘You said,’ he mewls, squeezing his eyes shut, hands covering them, covering as much of his face as possible.

Not all the ghosts that crowd around him, clamour for his attention, not all the dead, are the wronged dead, the restless dead, those who cannot go wherever it is they go _after_ because someone did something they cannot forgive. Not all of them are innocents. Or victims. Or even your ordinary, everyday scumbag. Some of them—

What they are and what they represent as a link to the afterlife is not the only reason to be frightened of them. There are monsters in the dark, with him.

 _‘Pretty little boy,’_ the husky voice comes as he knew it would, and with it a spill of filth as bad as the first time. 

The first time.

The first time.

He’d been a kid. A little kid. Not a thirteen-year-old kid’s body holding a thirty-year-old man’s mind. Just a kid. A kid scared witless. In the dark. Locked in. By his father. 

He doesn’t listen this time to the threats and promises that had made him piss himself the first time. It’s disgusting what this man took pleasure in in life, what this man longs to do after death, what this man has done, to him, because he’d let him. His mind had gotten so dizzy and sick and afraid that he’d let his powers slip and brought the nightmare down on his own head. 

There’s a touch, the side of his neck. He shudders. ‘Go away! I’m not a kid anymore. I’m too old. You said it yourself, anything older than twelve—’

The touch trails down to the collar of his pyjamas, the words cooing, calling him pretty, a pretty _little boy._ He strikes out, eyes still clenched shut, feels the faintest ghostly presence as his arm flails through the assailant, and them, _bam_. Pain. The side of his hand smacking off the edge of something in the dark. A statue. A casket. It doesn’t matter.

He cries out. Cradles the limb close. The touching keeps happening, the words. The touching and the words and the memory of Dave, Dave the last one who _touched_ him and how different those touches had been, how soft and sweet and tender and lovely, and the pain in his hand, and grief— he starts to go away. He doesn’t mean to. It just— everything starts to feel very far away as he’s laid down, as those hands, such cold hands, start to fumble with his clothing, the words, the filth, so strong in his ears, and—

There is a squawk of something that sounds like pain from the man, the ghost, touching him, and then a pressure he hadn’t known was there disappears, the weight of the ghost holding him down—

‘Well, look at you Babydoll, still getting yourself in trouble.’  
 _No._

‘No,’ he whimpers, curling himself into a ball on the dusty floor, wrapping his arms around his head as if that could keep him safe. 

‘A deal is a deal, Darling,’ the voice continues, and he can feel it, the ghostly presence sitting down by his side. ‘Even if you can’t hold up your end for another— hm, five? years. Or, if I’m a very good boy, maybe that grumpy old man brother of yours will decide you’ve all fixed whatever needs fixing and find a way to return you to your _fine_ future self,’ here he can feel a hand slide down his side, soft, caressing, before pulling away. ‘I never was one for the kiddies, as I told you the first time we met.’

There is, as always, something a little off about the voice. Well, there’s a lot of things off about the voice, but after not hearing it for the last year or so it sticks in the mind. The way the pet-names, the slang, all sound like the one saying them never spoke such words in life. There’s a hint of mockery to them, a hint like the ghost talking is almost playing a role— he still doesn’t understand it. 

‘You’re not here,’ he says. 

‘Hate to break it to you Babydoll, but _here_ I most definitely am.’ 

He doesn’t know what to say, there are so many things to say, what can he say? ‘You weren’t here when I was thirteen. The next time I saw you—’

‘Was your eighteenth birthday Darling. Such a _special_ night. But, let me tell you, I was more definitely here, I’ve been here the whole time, every day since we made our deal to the day the world almost ended to _now,_ back in the less than glorious past. I have spent every single moment of your life since you were what, _eight? Nine?_ right by your side.’

‘Why didn’t I see you then?’ he asks, and he hates the combination of dread and rejection he can hear in his own voice. Why is it a rejection? This is not a ghost whose attention anyone should ever want. 

‘Because you didn’t want to,’ the voice says, sounding completely unconcerned. ‘Because most of the time you were completely out of your mind on one thing or another. And because recently, ever since your dear old dad slipped this mortal coil, Benny-boy has been hanging around almost all the time, and I know how much you’ve always hated the idea of him seeing us together. See. I can be a decent man. I can be considerate.’

‘ _Decent,_ ’ he scoffs, finally pulling his arms away from his head and sitting up. This feeling is resignation. He feels resigned. ‘ _Considerate._ ’

‘Oh, don’t be like that Dollface,’ the voice, the man, handsome in his sharklike way, though more than a little inhuman in appearance. Like a doll or a statue or the image of a man instead of a man itself. Like something that’s forgotten the exact proportions of its original shape and so has remade itself into what it conceptualises as being correct. ‘I always kept up my end of the bargain, kept the creeps away, and when it was time to hold you to yours— wasn’t I sweet? Didn’t I always make sure you were having a good time? I never hurt you, did I?’

All those times between sobriety and insobriety, all those nightmares of being held down and touched and taken and made to _enjoy_ it no matter what he actually wanted. They were just as real as the rest of it. All those lies he told himself all slipping away. ‘You never gave me a choice,’ he says, his voice sounding empty to his own ears. 

‘I did,’ the ghost reminds him, black, abyssal eyes glancing over him in the dark. ‘You made your choice back then, with than nasty dead man on you, _in_ you, it’s just you never really expected to be kept to it. _A promise is a promise_ Babydoll, it’s not my fault you didn’t realise that.’

What can he say to that? He doesn’t want to live in a world where that’s true, where it is his fault— but that’s this world, isn’t it? That’s the world he’s been living in his whole life. 

Anyway, his opinion doesn’t matter, because the ghost is talking again, saying, ‘I really do hope— _Five?_ Is that his name? I never did pay much attention to the arrogant little shit. Whatever it is, I really do hope he sends you back soon. I don’t like _this_. You really are like a fine wine Dollface, you definitely got better with age. Dave was a lucky man.’

‘ _Don’t you say his name,_ ’ the words are out before he can bite them back, tone dark, threatening. Empty threats. They both know it. The ghost laughs. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off!’ he hisses, which just makes the ghost laugh harder. 

‘Do you really want that Darling? If I do all those nasty voices, all those nasty spirits, all those nasty _men_ might just come back and make a meal out of you. Isn’t it better with good old Jacques at your side to keep you safe?’

Safe.

_Safe._

‘How are you here?’ he whispers into the echoing dark, eyes clenched shut. How? How? How? How if he’s been there this whole time, if he’s come back with them from the future? How is it possible.

‘Easy as pie Babydoll, you are _mine_ after all.’

In the morning it’s Pogo and Mom that let him out, worry evident on her face even if the expression on his is unreadable. He feels like he’s floating as he walks past, disconnected from everything, the shadowy presence of Jacques following long, keeping pace with him. As Mom coos ‘Lets get you some breakfast, you’ve had a long night. How do you feel about _waffles?_ ’ he finds his gaze fixing on Pogo’s uncomfortable face.

‘You’ve been complicit,’ the words slip out, feeling like they’re coming from so very far away. ‘In everything he ever did. To all of us. To Vanya—’ he sees the words strike home as he drifts past. 

Fuck sobriety. 

_Fuck it all._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I got inspired and wrote more. Thank you all so much for reading the first part, and to those who left kudos and comments. I hope you have all had a lovely week. A couple of notes before we get to the story-
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter includes suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt, as well as implications of past sexual assault, prostitution, and mentions of people engaging in sexually inappropriate behaviour towards someone underage, as well as someone whose body is underage while their consciousness is not, and probably a lot of things I'm forgetting. This whole fic pretty much requires a massive trigger warning at this point. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: I am going to writing Klaus as generfluid/gender non-binary/gender non-conforming/genderqueer/whatever your individually preferred label is, but I will be using male pronouns and not the currently preferred 'they.' I feel I should give an explanation for this in the notes to start with in case I inadvertently cause confusion or distress, because I know for a lot of people the pronoun issue is very important. The thing is, as somebody who identifies as genderqueer, and has done so for very many years now, I, as an individual, do not use gender neutral pronouns, be they 'they' or be they 'ze/hir/zir/etc.' so, as the writer I am making the same choice here as I have in my everyday life. If you want my reasons for this you can ask and I'll do my best to explain, but I don't really think you came here to read about me, so I won't go into them right now. I know this is a long paragraph, but I really don't want to accidentally hurt anyone, and I hope very much that I haven't come off as aggressive or unnecessarily defensive or too off putting to read my writing.

He pretty much crawls into his dad’s bar, downing half a bottle of truly excellent Scotch before even the man himself notices. Then he’s a disappointment again, but at this point boo-hoo who cares? Of course his spectacular double back-flip off the wagon attracts the attentions of more than just dear old dad, and the malty smoke and iodine taste of Lagavulin sours in his mouth as his siblings, well, Luther, Diego and Allison, barely let each other take turns in telling him off for jeopardizing the mission, for being selfish, for not caring about Vanya— even Ben and Five have a go in their own ways, Ben all disappointment and “you’re better than this," Five dismissive, as if the other never expected any better but is disappointed anyway. All the while, through all the miserable mortification of it, through the pain he doesn’t want and won’t acknowledge, that they didn’t even notice, Jacques is there, a slim shadow in black, every now and then a slender blade appearing and disappearing, flowing through ghostly fingers like water.

He has seen the spirit use those knives, but only against other ghosts. He wonders what the dead man would be like as an opponent in a fight- terrifying probably. He’s not like Diego, he never throws them, no, instead he likes to get up nice and close-

‘For fuck's sake Klaus, I thought you were getting somewhere. I wish you’d stop acting like you’re nothing more than a useless junkie,’ Ben says as the other finally abandons him to go chasing after Vanya.

For failing to pay attention to all the people that want his attention but don’t want to give the courtesy of returning the favour he finds himself locked in his room all afternoon, without meals. After a while the Scotch wears off enough that he falls into the grimy feeling of a mild hangover acquired after day drinking. Weak headache, sour stomach, general malaise. 

Jacques says nothing, just leans against the wall and looks at him with those pitch coloured eyes. ‘I’m not staying here all day,’ he mutters more to himself than the ghost.

He feels antsy, itchy, the urge to do something self destructive rising. He’s under no delusions— maybe he’s not always honest with those around him but he tries to be honest with himself. The way he feels right now— things are going to end badly.

They don’t need him, they’ve proven that. They can fix Vanya without him.

Last time at thirteen he hadn’t worked out how to escape his bedroom and climb down the outside of the Academy yet. That was the years after Ben— well, no point dwelling. On his way out he sticks both middle fingers up in case dad’s watching.

To start out the plan is to find something to wear, go dancing, and get people, any people, to buy him enough drinks that he can’t even remember his own name, let alone all the things he wants to forget. 

Slight problem, he looks thirteen and he has no money for something cute to wear. The Umbrella Academy uniform might attract the right kind of creep to buy an obviously underage boy a whole lot of alcohol, but even just wearing it makes him feel itchy and wrong. That boy’s been dead for years, ever since his first OD. The money bit is easy. Surprisingly easy.

His first thought is to find some of the same kind of creep who’ll engage in a bit of bad-touch for a twenty, maybe a fifty, but then he finds a wallet on the ground. Or, Jacques finds a wallet on the ground, standing there and staring at it until it attracts his attention. Which, ok, a suspiciously good stroke of luck, and when he leans down to tie his shoelace and surreptitiously scoops it up before creeping off to disappear into a nearby alley to have a look inside he finds that it’s got one hundred and twenty bucks in it, which— well, that’ll net him an outfit for the evening with some left over for- he doesn’t let the thought crystalize.

He doesn’t usually steal from people he’s not related to, or isn’t angry with, or don’t have obvious insurance for whatever it is, or don’t have something he wants really, really, really bad— oh, who is he kidding. But, you know, he tells himself every time he does just steal from some random person that he’s not going to do it again, that he feels bad, guilty, and every time he hopes he really will start to feel those things, but most of the time he just feels empty. Maybe not this time though, so soon after Dave, this time he nurtures the niggle of guilt— not enough not to take the money, but enough to wipe his fingerprints off the wallet and surreptitiously return it to where he found it. Hopefully someone will hand it in or Stuart Delaney, the wallet’s owner if the unflattering driver’s license is anything to do by, will backtrack back and find it himself. It’s designer leather, full of platinum credit cards. It’s probably not the man’s last one-hundred and twenty dollars he’s wandering off with. Hopefully, anyway.

Having money leads him to Gimbel Brothers Department Store and to being face-to-face with Delores. An unexpected development. She may not be wearing her charming black and white ensemble, but he’d recognize the face of the love of his brother’s life anywhere. Or at least he thinks that’s what was going on with the mannequin. It was all a bit confusing and Five was hardly ever forthcoming. 

He looks at the little strappy dress she’s wearing, kind of Boho-chic in a low-rent way. ‘My brother has a surprisingly fine taste in women,’ he tells her with a nod of acknowledgement. ‘Maybe I’ll bring him around sometime, remind him of what he’s missing.’

This is where he used to come as a kid, starting in maybe six months from now, a few months after Five disappeared, when he’d sneak away from the rest of the family and go window shopping, looking at all the pretty things his father would go apoplectic if he wore. To start with, anyway, before temptation got big enough to overcome fear, and he started actually _shopping_ shopping. Kind of. Admittedly this is also where he’d carefully pocketed the first eyeliner pencil he ever got— _Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline._

He gets himself another of those little black pencils, a single eyeshadow in a metallic champagne that he can use as a highlighter in this land before time in which you can’t just walk into any shop and buy one and the people you ask will have no idea what you’re talking about, and a sticky sweet lip gloss in a peachy pink that barely shows on his lips as anything more than a faint, pearly shine. 

If his body was thirty like it should be he knows what he’d buy to wear, something skimpy, a little bit girly, maybe a pair of heels to go with it all— he feels like wearing heels. Except his body is thirteen and it’s creepy. It’s not creepy when he can’t see it, because when he can’t see it his mind defaults to thinking he looks like he should look, but the moment he glances down and sees bare palms, skin unmarked by his tattoos, things start to feel off. It gets worse when he eventually picks some stuff off the racks and finds his way to the changing room.

The him staring back in those little black low-rise fake suede shorts and strappy little top in the same champagne as the eyeshadow looks kind of gross. Well, looks like a kid, a thirteen-year-old kid, not like him, and seeing a thirteen-year-old kid dressed up like he might get dressed up to use his wiles to get himself a skinful kind of makes him feel a little bit like someone should be notifying a responsible adult. This was his body once, but now it’s a stranger to him—

He really should do something, apologize maybe, to Five for failing to be adequately considerate of just how fucking awful it must have been to go from old man in an adult body he knew and had grown comfortable in to being stuck thirteen again. Of course they’re now all in the same situation, but— is it worse if you go from fifty-whatever to thirteen, than from thirty to thirteen? There’s a few more years there after all. 

For a moment, looking at his half-assed impression of fuck-doll being ruined by him being the wrong age, he almost can’t go through with it— but it’s not like he can slink on home now. There’s going to be trouble whenever he does return, so he might as well have fun while he can.

Maybe if he just sticks to drinking and dancing— He doesn’t actually want to be touched right now, it’s like that hunger, that eternal feeling like his skin is covered in the hook side of Velcro just waiting to stick to anyone that walks by, that all feels gone. He feels weirdly cold and cut off, and instead of the urge to do something about it driving him up the wall, driving him to do anything he can to earn anyone’s attention, just so he can say to himself that he’s still here, still real, he just wants to leave it like that.

‘I don’t like this look Babydoll,’ Jacques says, speaking for the first time in hours. ‘Maybe in a few years, when there’s something worth looking at for you to be showing off, but now—’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion,’ he tells the ghost, even though he’s been thinking something similar. It’s funny, hearing Jacques say that just makes him actually want to buy the clothes. Makes him want to wear them. Makes him want to get someone’s grubby little hands all over him— _no._ Maybe not that. Maybe not just yet. Not after—

Well, there’s memories and there’s Dave, and all of it is about as arousing as having his cock cut off. 

If he wasn’t physically thirteen he’d be telling himself to go out there, get back on that horse and give it a good ride, but with the way his body is— He kind of doesn’t want to fuck anyone who would fuck him right now. 

It’s funny, first time around being looked at, _wanted,_ by anyone older had made him feel sexy, _powerful,_ valuable, but that was before he grew up and grew old and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen-year-olds stopped being his peers and started being kids he’d pass on the street in the haze between here and there. Now instead of whatever idolisation he’d had for the older perverts that had gotten their hands on him, the well-dressed ones with nice cars and nice clothes and money to spend on him and on the things stronger than pot that he’d soon taken to, he mainly just feels disgust. Contempt, maybe. It’s complicated. It’s not arousing— not that something being un-arousing has ever stopped him before— but he just doesn’t feel like he can cope with it right now. 

Dancing though, drinking, maybe being groped a little and ground up against a tiny bit, as long as it’s no more than that— He likes the first two ideas and can cope with the others. For now though, there’s hours to go before the sun sets. 

He buys the little shorts, the little top, a pair of panties in black lace because he doesn’t feel like going commando, the makeup, and a pair of black platform slides comfortable enough to dance all night in. The woman who serves him looks at him the whole time, something a lot like judgement on her face, and he wants to tell her to go find someone to sit on it until she’s having a better time, but he looks thirteen and he’ll be chucked out of the store. If they don’t confine him and call his father. In the end, before she even asks him for his money, she asks what he’s doing buying what are obviously girls’ things, and he makes up some lie about a sister he doesn’t have with a boyfriend she doesn’t have and how he owes her because of some mischief he didn’t get up to. It satisfies her enough that she lets him purchase his bundle of gender non-conformity. As if it’s any of her business. At least it doesn’t seem like she recognized his uniform.

Out on the street he strips off said uniform shoes and socks, his blazer, his sweater-vest, and wanders the city in his shorts and shirt, slides on his feet, black rimming his eyes, the extraneous parts of his uniform dumped in a bin like the rest of it will be before the night’s over.

He doesn’t even feel the cold. 

Mainly he watches the pigeons. Who doesn’t like pigeons?

Night falls and he finds an out of the way corner behind an out of the way dumpster that he used to hide behind to refresh his high on his way home, once upon a time in a couple years hence. He leaves the shorts and shirt and his old, standard Umbrella Academy issue tighty-whities in with the trash and emerges not so much a butterfly, but a man trapped in a child’s body, barely dressed and wearing badly applied makeup. 

There’s a club nearby that he goes to a lot, though hasn’t been to for the first time for a few years yet in the timeline, and every now and then something happens, like he’s put on the list of people they do not let in— until he can find the right dick to suck or pussy to eat to convince management to change their minds— or maybe there’s an ex of the particularly acrimonious break-up variety out front or inside, and he wants to get in or out without being spotted, or maybe he kind of owes one of his dealers a bit and they’re in there, or sometimes there’s someone else’s angry boyfriend/girlfriend/other he would like to avoid, and the good thing about this club, above all other clubs, is that he’s worked out a back way in, or out. Which is particularly useful right now. Because inside in the weak and multi-coloured light maybe he can pass for a young sixteen, maybe eighteen. Out under the harsh glare of the all-too close street light no one is going to be fooled.

It does involve a bit of climbing and squeezing himself small into tight places and not being spotted as he comes down a set of stairs, probably not structurally sound and rarely used, that few customers actually know about, but it’s even easier than usual now that he’s so much smaller. 

He gets what he came for. He dances. He convinces all sots of people to buy him drinks when they really should not be doing so. He sucks a tab of E off the tongue of a young woman who should know better than to be kissing little boys. He just wishes he was having fun. The drink makes things hazy, the E makes everything feel sweeter, but in the heart of him he feels—

Well, even when he’s dancing, even when he’s bellowing the lyrics to a song he didn’t realise he remembered from his childhood, arms slung loosely around the shoulders of that lovely girl generous with her E, even when he’s grinding his ass back against the pelvis of a man more than ten years older than his body and maybe three years younger than his mind, Jacques is there, watching. A silent figure by his side. The feel of him something like a storm rising, his presence not fading no matter how drunk or high he gets.

Then he sees Dave-not-his-Dave. Dave who just used to be Dave before there was another Dave to take the name and make it mean that all other Daves would ever pale in comparison. For the sake of his sanity he’ll just call this one _Drugdealer Dave_ , or maybe _Heroindealer Dave_ — no, the first is definitely catchier— though it still contains “Dave.” How about _Drugdealer man whose name is probably actually David_?

The money, now curled up in his back pocket, suddenly seems to weigh a ton. How much heroin could he buy with what he has left? Would it be enough to— Definitely. It’s not like this body has any tolerance to speak of. 

Now this is a bad idea. This is—

It’s not like he hasn’t tried not to be himself over the years. No matter what everyone else says. He has tried. He has tried to be better, but—

Why does he keep doing this? There is no reason. Dave is dead, long dead, and he is not needed, and yeah, it is true, usually he goes through life not caring, you know, if it happens it happens, no real waste, but right now he actually _wants_ it, and all this stuff with Vanya— all their guilt there, and he’s sick of guilt, and the night before, in the mausoleum, and Jacques— There’s been a lot of things that have happened to him over the years he hasn’t been able to tell anyone, mainly because if he starts to by the time he’s gotten to the point they’re already angry and disgusted and just not listening, or they don’t care to begin with, and it’s been a life of it all being his own fault, not matter what it was, no matter how young he was, and for all these years he’s tried to convince himself that maybe it wasn’t, and not just that, that maybe one day he’d do something right and suddenly he’d matter to the people he loves, that he could talk about this stuff and they’d listen and they wouldn’t say it was his fault. But it is his fault. Or at least enough of it is that the rest doesn’t matter. The worst bits— maybe not the worst as far as physical harm is concerned, but the worst bits as far as how much he knows they damaged him— well, no one to blame but himself. His own powers. His own body betraying him. And yeah, he had told Dave some of it, not— _that stuff_ — but some of the rest of it and the man had never, ever, even _suggested_ that he’d brought it on himself— and funny, that had caused their first fight, because he couldn’t accept not being blamed, until Dave somehow wore him down and convinced him, but Dave is, as said, dead, and Dave feels more like a dream than a man at this point. It feels like a delusion. Some last ditch self-soothing before the end.

He finishes the last of his drink, some fruit-sweet concoction with an alcoholic afterburn that shimmers in his breath, and then he slinks over to the scumbag in his sights. Or slinks as well as he can through the crowd with as much as he’s drunk. 

Of course this _David_ doesn’t know him yet. And of course, as a drug dealer, this _David_ is a bit suspicious at being approached by some strange kid after heroin. But, of course, he knows this _David_ well enough to convince the man with a statement of “some girl, I don’t know, blonde, I was dancing with her earlier, and she said you have the good stuff when I asked— like, not outright, but after feeling out the conversation you know?— where I could get some” and the promise of a blowjob as well as the cash. Unlike Jacques this _David_ never did have much compunction about age. 

So they end up in the alley between the club and the empty warehouse being converted into apartments next door, cash is exchanged for a few baggies and a needle, because all his own kit is off seventeen years hence, and he’s just letting the man push him down to his knees with an earful of what a _pretty young thing_ he is, when he hears a voice, familiar at this point, and not making a whole lot of sense. 

‘Ah, I see. How unfortunate.’

He looks up at Jacques just in time to see the ghost corporeally manifest, to hear the strangled shriek of ‘what the fuck is tha—’ from _David,_ to see Jacques dart forward, arm moving in a graceful arc, to feel the blood splatter across his front. He skitters backwards, going from his knees to his ass on the grimy cobbles.

_David’s_ hands are at the man’s throat, trying to stem the spray of arterial blood. It doesn’t take long. The heart pumping away to the body’s demise, rivers of red escaping between the man’s clenched fingers, to splatter between them. _David_ falls. Just in front of him. 

He’s not sure what kind of noise he makes, it’s not a good noise, it’s high pitched and frightened. That wasn’t him. Was that him? It didn’t feel like with Ben, it didn’t feel like his powers—

‘Oh dear, Darling,’ that voice coos, the shadowy form of Jacques crouching down by his side. ‘I have made a mess of you. I am so sorry. We’d best get you home.’

He looks from the slumped form of now dead _David_ down to his own hands, his legs, his front, all the blood, the blood he can see and feel, the blood on is face. For a moment he’s back then and David is _Dave,_ but even in that delusion he can see Jacques, and Jacques was not there then. ‘H-how?’ he asks. No matter where he goes people will be able to see— he’ll be _arrested,_ arrested because of a dead drug dealer, arrested with heroin in his pockets. His father will find out. The whole family will _know_ what happened. Fuck, if he thinks they feel contempt for him now—

Cold hands, strange hands, hands that don’t feel entirely real, hook up under his armpits and pull him to his feet. He stumbles a little. ‘There, there, Babydoll, don’t you fret. You just stay nice and close to Jacques and no one will see a thing.’

He’s not entirely sure of what happens next, his memories are mostly of stumbling, shocky, through the streets, Jacques arm a disconcertingly solid weight around his waist. He keeps tripping back into the past, Vietnam, all that death, all that blood, the feel of Dave dying in his arms— he’s covered in blood again. He feels sick. Wrong. Contaminated. No one seems to see him though, they pass so close by, brush almost flesh to flesh, but the child, bloody and afraid, seems invisible to them. Like usual.

Before he realises it, he’s back at the Academy, back in his room, his dark, empty room. No one there, no one waiting, worried about where he went. Hah. He finds himself laughing, bitter. Ah yes. Yes, yes, yes. It really is time again for another try. Maybe this one will take. 

It’s easier then, a little resolve goes a long way to keeping a body moving. He has the heroin. He has his syringe, he needs— He’s got a lighter, he’s got one of the good silver serving spoons that the child version of himself stole along with a couple forks— intending either to pawn them or trade them for pot— and one of their long, uniform socks will probably do to tie around his arm, he can get cotton from the first aid kit all of them have in their rooms, and there’s a glass of water by his bed that Mom left earlier. It’s like fate, all the dominos lining up. 

Jacques watches him as he scurries around getting set up, worry only beginning to appear on the ghost’s face when the spirit sees exactly how much heroin he’s preparing. ‘What are you doing Babydoll?’ the man asks as he fills the syringe.

He ignores the other in favour of getting the sock around his arm. Purpose is like magic, it makes it so much easier to focus. He feels good. Light. Everything’s ok right now. 

There’re the veins, fat and juicy, unmarred, unscarred just yet. This should be enough. Maybe Dave will be waiting for him.

The tip of the needle slips in before— he feels cold. So cold. Something pulling at him, dragging the heat from his flesh, and the needle falls from his suddenly limp grip, a bead of blood welling out where it pierced skin. 

‘Oh no you don’t Darling,’ Jacques is there again, made manifest, one large ghostly hand scooping up the filled syringe, the other picking up the baggies with their crystalline remnants. 

The voice is still talking to him through his despair, purpose stolen. ‘You want to do this in five years’ time go right ahead, be my guest— actually, maybe wait a little longer, you at twenty-five—Mmhm. So, if you take my preferences into account, any time after twenty-five you want to kill yourself then kill yourself, but not just yet, not when there’s a chance you’ll get stuck like this _after._ I told you last night, a deal’s a deal, and you’ve already used too many of my services to renege. You’re mine, _forever,_ and I want you in your prime, not in this child body.’

‘Let me go,’ he whimpers, eyes on the syringe, the way out. 

‘Sorry Dollface,’ Jacques clenches the fist holding the needle and it crumples, he clenches it again and when he opens his hand there’s nothing there. A little gesture and the baggies vanish too. ‘That’s not how this works.’

Tears come then, even though they’re pointless. He finds himself on the bed, curling into a little ball, crying silently. It hurts. It all hurts. It hurts and he hates that the power to deal with the pain has been taken from him. 

‘You’ll get over it,’ Jacques says, leaning against the wall near the window, looking out into the darkness. ‘You always do.’


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we have a mid-week chapter and a bit of sibling bonding. Thank you all for reading, for leaving kudos, and commenting! I appreciate it.

He gets up before the sun rises. He didn’t so much sleep as have a series of short, nearly incomprehensible nightmares interspersed with much staring at the wall. 

After picking the lock on his door, an easy feat that he won’t work out how to perform for another year and a half at thirteen, he creeps down empty hallways to the bathroom and scrubs all of now dead _David’s_ blood off himself before changing into a new uniform. It’s strange being awake even before Luther, oddly enough even before their father. Even Mom isn’t wandering the halls, probably plugged into her charging station and staring into infinity—

He gathers the clothes he wore the night before, all of them bloodstained and messy and linking him to a dead drug dealer, strips anything useful from the pockets, the little money he has left, the makeup, and takes the bundle into the garden with his lighter. It takes a bit to get the fire started, but once it’s going he can watch them contract and melt, all those synthetic fibres, smell the stink of it, mourn the loss of those supremely comfortable slides. He didn’t actually want to burn them, but the blood— it’s all evidence. Maybe he can get a new pair, not that there’s much money left. Maybe fifteen dollars— the blowjob he never ended up giving netted him a bit of a discount. 

That’s where Vanya finds him, curled up, arms around his knees, watching the fire. Alone. When he woke up Jacques wasn’t there. 

She hesitates for a moment, then sits down by his side, careful of her skirt. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks and that almost makes him cry. ‘You seemed quite upset yesterday, before dad locked you in your room.’

‘I don’t—’ his gaze flickers from her concerned face to the fire. ‘I don’t know how to talk about it.’

‘It’s okay if you can’t,’ she says, ‘but if you want to, I’ll listen.’

How could he burden her with his shit? Her at thirteen— even her at thirty. He always felt she was better than him in a way— not like Luther or Diego or Allison, maybe _better_ is the wrong word. _Purer._ He never wanted to taint her the way he didn’t worry so much with their other siblings. 

They fall into silence for a moment. Just a moment. Because a moment later she’s wiggling a couple of cigarettes at him, and when he goes to take them, surprised but grateful, she pulls them out of his grasp— ‘I want you to tell me something,’ she says. ‘I mean, I’ll give you these if you do?’

‘Where did you get them?’ he asks, eying the little paper cylinders. 

‘That’s not important,’ she says. ‘Do we have a deal?’

‘I mean, yeah?’ he nods. ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know whether or not you give me the cigarettes, but I’ll appreciate it if you do.’

She gives him an assessing look before nodding, sudden and abrupt, and handing them over. He takes them, tucks one behind his ear, and lights the other, sucking in the smoke. ‘I want to know what’s up with everyone,’ is what she says. ‘They’re all behaving— they’re being really weird. I don’t trust it. I just want to know if this is some set-up or something, like, some elaborate prank—’

‘Because they’re being nice to you?’ he asks on a lung-full of smoke.

‘Yes!’ she declares, nodding. ‘I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it?’

‘Why did you decide to ask me about it?’ he asks her.

‘Because I thought you’d tell me the truth, you tend to, and if I gave you something in return—’ she trails off, then suddenly gives him an apologetic smile. ‘That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I don’t see you as— whatever it is what I just said implies. I’m worried about you so I wanted a chance to talk to you anyway, and you’ve always been nice to me. Nicer than Allison and Luther and Diego at least.’

‘Faint praise, that,’ he murmurs, before turning to her with a smile. ‘You don’t need to worry, they’re not all out to get you. We all realised how horrible to you we’ve been; they’re just being a bit competitive about trying to be better siblings.’

‘What do you mean, have you been talking about me?’ she asks, looking at him with confusion.

He takes a drag on the cigarette. ‘Yeah, I’m afraid we have. Look, we’ve been really shitty siblings, all of us, and that hasn’t been fair to you. We’ve been acting like you’re unimportant, like you’re nobody, and that’s just not true, you’re our sister and we love you, we all do, all of us, and you are important, you do matter, and we are all so very sorry—’ he flicks ash onto the dirt, glances at the fire, ‘— _I_ am sorry. Sorry for all of it.’

He hears her make a soft little noise, and then suddenly her arms are around him and she’s pulling him off balance and into a hug. He makes his own soft noise. All that Velcro-skin feeling coming back. The feel of her holding him satisfying in a way that a million moments in some unloving stranger’s arms have never been. They hold each other for who knows how long, the cigarette burning down ignored between his fingers. 

Eventually she pulls back with a little sniff, wiping at her face with utmost dignity. He takes one last drag off the cigarette before flicking the butt into the fire. ‘Do you want to go somewhere with me?’ he asks her on impulse.

She looks at him with a smile on her lips and a fond frown between her brow, ‘Where?’

He shrugs. ‘I have no idea. Just somewhere. Out into the city, away from the Academy.’

‘We’re not supposed to do that—’ she says, though he thinks that maybe she wants to. ‘We’ll get in trouble.’

He shrugs. ‘What’s the worst that he can do, lock us all alone in the dark?’ He sees the words hit, sees some part of her recognise what he’s talking about, sees her skin start to pale, her eyes— ‘Nevermind me!’ he yelps. ‘I’m an idiot and an asshole and I have no idea what I’m talking about. Forget it, yeah? Why don’t you go and find Allison, I know she really wants a chance to spend more time with you.’

‘No,’ she says, and he’s glad to see the pale of her has returned to something more skin-toned. ‘No. Let’s do it. Let’s go out, go do something, just you and me.’

And that’s how they end up wandering the city together. He buys them both a pastry for breakfast with his fifteen dollars and they walk side by side, not really going anywhere, just walking, watching the pigeons together. It’s good, spending time with her, it makes him feel better than he has in days— sort of. He feels more alive, more here, happier when they’re talking, when she seems comfortable with him, but at the same time there’s an inexplicable bitter sting that he feels from time to time. It’s that pain he gets when he’s near someone he wants to share his hurt with but can’t. It makes the hurt feel more real. 

Funny how no one recognizes them. Maybe it’s because they’re both invisible, in their different ways. It’s like camouflage. 

Somehow they end up back in front of Delores. He introduces them, ‘Delores this is Vanya, Vanya this is Delores— she’s the love of Five’s life.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she laughs, and when he can only shrug she must determine he’s being silly, but with good grace she greets the mannequin.

They wander the aisles of the store, looking at the clothes. Every now and then he pulls something off the rack and holds it up in front of himself, arching his brows to ask her opinion. She gives it, sometimes complimentary, often amusingly sarcastic. 

‘You know,’ he tells her, ‘If I had some more money I could buy you something. A nice dress maybe. Anything other than having to go through life in our uniforms—’

‘I don’t think I want a dress,’ she says, examining a pair of jeans and pulling a face at how low-rise they are. 

‘Then what would you want?’ he asks, holding up a short, 70s inspired crochet dress against his own body, ‘imagine I’ve got I dunno, fifty dollars, and I can buy you whatever you want. What would that be?’

‘I dunno,’ she shrugs. ‘Some pants? I get so jealous of you boys in your shorts.’

They wander through the rest of the store and he finds himself eyeing off the platform slides, looking at the single pair still there in his size. ‘Weren’t you burning a pair of those this morning?’ Vanya asks, coming up beside him and examining the shoes as well.

‘We had a little bit of an accident last night,’ he says with a shrug. ‘It’s a pity. They were so comfortable.’

‘They’re only thirty—’ she suggests, looking at him expectantly. 

‘Which is thirty—’ he does a bit of mental calculation, ‘make that _almost_ thirty dollars more than I have.’

‘I’ll get them for you, do they have any left in your size?’

‘How do you have money?’ he asks her.

She shrugs. ‘I save my allowance?’

‘Why do you get an allowance?’

‘I don’t know, don’t you get one?’ she asks, looking supremely confused. 

He shakes his head. No one has ever suggested he should have an allowance. Certainly not their father.

‘What about the others?’ she asks, a little wide eyed.

‘I have no idea,’ he replies. ‘If they do they’ve certainly never shared the fact—’

A pause, and then ‘Huh,’ they both exclaim in chorus. 

‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to waste your money on me, I don’t need them.’

‘But you want them, don’t you?’ she asks, examining his face with a gentle smile. ‘And I want to do something nice for you. I’ve enjoyed this, just us two spending time together.’

‘But they’re thirty dollars, surely you can’t have that much put away.’

A secretive little smile, a little self-satisfied— and how much exactly is their father giving her?— and she says ‘It’s nothing. Trust me.’

‘Well, if you want to treat me—’

‘I do,’ she declares, gesturing until he pulls the box off the shelf, checking that both shoes are the right size, and then taking them to the registers. 

It’s the same woman. ‘Is this your sister?’ she asks, eying Vanya, the shoes. 

‘No,’ he tells her. ‘This is not that naughty sister of mine. This is my little sister, and she would never do any of those wicked things I told you about.’

‘Ah-huh,’ the woman replies, looking at both of them as if they are highly dubious characters. Which he thinks is unfair. He may be highly dubious, but most of the time Vanya is only _mildly_ dubious at best. When she’s not ending the world of course. 

‘What was that about?’ his sister asks as they get out onto the street. 

‘Oh, she didn’t want to sell me a bunch of makeup and stuff yesterday so I had to make up—’ here he giggles, can’t help himself, ‘— a little lie to convince her I was allowed to buy girls’ things.’

‘Is that the stuff you were burning?’ she asks him. 

A reminder. He can feel the smile slipping off his face. He nods. 

‘Did something happen to you last night?’ She looks so concerned, as if she actually cares about him. 

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he tells her. ‘It was nothing I didn’t bring on myself.’

‘I am worried though,’ she insists. ‘I care about you.’

He hugs her again, sudden, as much a surprise to himself as it is to her. ‘Thank you. I care about you too, and because I do— trust me when I say it’s nothing, I just had a bit of an accident, that’s all. I’m fine.’ He lets her go after pressing a kiss to the crown of her head and, big, wide, and utterly _false_ smile on his face, he says, ‘I had an idea earlier. You hate your skirt, half the time at least I hate my shorts, so do you want to swap?’

‘Swap?’ he asks, a slightly disbelieving smile on her face. ‘You mean you wear my pinafore, I wear your shorts?’

‘If you want?’

She giggles, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to decline, but then she’s saying, ‘Ok, I guess.’

They find a public restroom to change, her sneaking him into the girls’ side, and they press in close in the one stall as they strip down and exchange garments. He takes off his socks as well and puts on his new pair of platform slides. He wishes he had the eyeliner on him, but it’s back at the Academy. Maybe he should have stolen another one.

They’re giggling as they spill back out onto the street. She looks good in the shorts, more like herself, and he’d say he looks more like himself in the pinafore. They get looks of course, but he doesn’t let it faze him. At least he’s not called a faggot on the street. Maybe because he’s young and willowy and androgynous enough that he might just be an awkward looking girl who hasn’t really struck puberty yet. Anyway, as for Vanya, girls are allowed to wear shorts.

‘Are you gay?’ she asks him while they’re watching a male pigeon bob up and down and coo and try and win the affections of an irritated female. Her hand immediately goes to cover her mouth as if she didn’t mean to actually say it. ‘Sorry. Sorry, I shouldn’t have—’

‘No! No it’s okay,’ he rushes to reassure her. ‘I’m not— like, gender doesn’t matter so much, I like girls and boys and people who are both or in between or neither—’ a little shrug, ‘—though I do like—’ how to put it? ‘I like, I guess, _masculine_ energy? If that makes sense. In people. Like, not like to the exclusion of everything else, but that’s what I like best, you know?’ he likes it when they want to fuck him, not the other way around, and he likes it when they’re strong and when they can hold him down and when they will hold him down if he wants, and maybe that’s not _masculine_ exactly, but he has no idea what else to call it. 

If you look at traditional gender roles, which he mainly thinks of as being bullshit, he can’t deny that he gets off on playing the woman. And it is partly play, but it’s also partly what he is. As embarrassing as it is, as much as it’s something he’d kept to himself, kept quiet, kept deep in the heart of him, he’d liked to think of himself as Dave’s _wife._ ‘I suppose it’s not just that,’ he finds himself saying, though he probably shouldn’t be burdening Vanya with any of his bullshit. ‘I don’t really feel like I’m a boy most of the time.’

‘Do you think you’re a girl?’ she asks him, her face serious but also so very kind. At thirteen she’s a sweet girl. She really did deserve better. 

He shakes his head, then shrugs, ‘No. Not so much, though I’ve always enjoyed feminine things. It’s more that I’m somewhere in between. Kind of both a lot of the time, though sometimes I’m one or the other.’

‘Huh,’ she says, thoughtful.

‘Does that disgust you?’ he asks her. It’s funny, he never actually properly came out to any of his family, he just did his own thing and left them to draw their own conclusions. Now he is actually waltzing out of the closet and he’s doing it to Vanya. This is probably going to get him in trouble with the rest of their siblings. It’s selfishness, isn’t it?

‘Of course not,’ she says, looking at him as if she can’t believe he’d suggest such a thing. ‘It makes a lot of sense to me. Is that why you’ve been so unhappy recently?’

‘Sort of,’ he says with a shrug. Because at thirteen the first time around he had been struggling with it, struggling with no one to help him, no one to talk to about any of it. 

‘Well, if there’s more, I still want you to know you can talk to me any time,’ she reassures him, then, linking her arm through his, they continue walking. 

After a while she leans in close and whispers, ‘Do you want to know a secret?’

‘Of course,’ he replies, leaning in in turn. 

‘You can’t tell anyone,’ she warns, ‘Especially not Allison. Or Luther.’

‘I won’t, I promise,’ he means to keep it too. He really does want to be a good brother to her. 

She leans in even closer and whispers, the merest breath of sound. ‘Sometimes I think I like girls.’

He pulls back to look at her in surprise. She looks nervous. Why didn’t he know this? Why didn’t she ever have a girlfriend? Why did she let that Peabody/Jenkins/Whatever asshole into her life?— Is she bi? Pan? Did they force her into the closet by spending so many years ignoring her? A tragedy. Not this time. Not on his watch. A huge smile starts cracking its way across his face. ‘Wonderful,’ he whispers back.

‘You don’t mind?’ she asks, and then laughs, the hypocrisy of him minding all they can both think of. 

‘Oh yes,’ he says, voice full of sarcasm, ‘I’m appalled at the very idea.’ Voice dropping again, barely more than a whisper, he leans in and says ‘Now, tell Auntie Klaus all about the kind of girls you think are cute.’

She swats him on the arm, giggling, and they walk together, arm in arm, leaning off each other, as she whispers about pop stars and girls in their neighbourhood.

They only start heading home as the sun starts to fall. They’re almost there when a woman, early-middle aged, white, very blonde, very well dressed, suddenly steps in front of them. Her eyes are oddly blank. ‘Klaus Hargreeves?’ she asks.

They step back, eye each other. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘I am supposed to give this to you,’ she says, holding out a fancy little paper bag, covered in the branding of an expensive local perfumery. 

He takes it, even as Vanya is telling him not to. The moment the bag’s strings leave the woman’s hand her eyes clear. She gives them both a slightly uncomfortable smile, eying their uniforms, says ‘I’m sorry, what did you just say?’ before blinking a couple of times and turning and leaving, melting back into the crowd. 

He looks into the bag, past the champagne coloured tissue paper, and finds a little cellophane wrapped box and a card. He lifts the card out, opening it, to find the words, _”Sorry about last night, Babydoll.”_

The box is perfume. _Mimosa Pour Moi_ by _L’Artisan Parfumeur._

Huh.

He had a girlfriend, if you could call her that. They were only together for about six days, him staying at hers because he had nowhere else to go. He must have been twenty-six. She had this little row of perfume bottles on her vanity. Chanel. Dior. Calvin Klein. A couple Penhaligons she told him she got in the UK when she was there for work. And this one. Mimosa Pour Moi. She never wore it during the few days they were together. 

He’d been curious on that last day, feeling trapped in her apartment while he waited for her to come home from work, and it was late at that point, because she worked as hard as she partied. So he’d sniffed all her perfume bottles and ended up trying this one on, spraying it across his decollate. The smell had been—something soft and fluffy, like mimosa as the name says, but also kind of like almonds and like violets or something. A softly sweet scent, not childlike, but nearing a grown-up innocence. He’d liked it.

There are holes in his memory after that point. He thinks maybe he got into some of her cocaine? No, not cocaine, he hadn’t been all buzzing and horny. Maybe it was Oxy? He doesn’t think it was heroin. He does remember that she had all his incredibly expensive French lingerie that he used to admire, and at some point he’d decided to try on a pair of her panties and this negligee, or maybe it was a shift, he’s not sure, and he can remember lying back on her California King bed in the lingerie, floating in a cloud of Mimosa Pour Moi, and the half sense of someone’s hands running up his legs, between his thighs, pushing the negligee up, and thinking it was her, and reaching for her but not being able to touch her, and then—

She’d been in the bedroom, calling him a pervert and a faggot, and she’d bundled all his stuff and thrown him out on the street, still in her lingerie— He shudders. Dropping the card back into the bag and holding it closed. 

‘What is it?’ she asks looking at him.

‘Nothing, it’s nothing,’ he says, which is when the rest of their siblings descend upon them, Luther and Allison in the lead.

‘Where were you?’ Luther demands, but it’s not him being addressed, it’s Vanya. 

‘We were so worried!’ Allison declares, pulling Vanya into her arms. ‘Are you ok? Did anything happen to you?’

He hears Vanya’s spluttering that she was just out with him, that’s all, which turns their attentions his way, and then they are all fighting to be the loudest one telling him off for being so irresponsible, for wandering off with Vanya, for not telling anyone, for possibly putting her in danger, etc. etc. Then, of course, there’s the moment they notice the exchange of shorts and skirt, which prompts a round of “what are you wearing,” and Allison reassuring Vanya that she’ll get her pinafore off him right now. 

‘No,’ Vanya is saying, not being listened to. ‘It was my idea as much as his. Why are you all being like this? We were having fun!’

He feels overwhelmed by all of it. All the good of earlier seems to fade under the weight of their condemnations. For a moment he wants to scream. Instead he strips off Vanya’s pinafore and flings it at Allison, ‘There, take it!’ and marching away from them all with the bag clenched tight against his chest. Heading back towards home in his underwear. Not even the cute panties he’d had to burn with the rest of it. More tighty-whities. 

‘Come back here,’ he hears from behind him. 

‘For fuck’s sake Klaus,’ he hears footsteps, then a hand is grabbing him roughly, spinning him around, and it’s too much, too much and—

‘DON’T TOUCH ME!’ he screams, bending forward with the force of the words propelling themselves out from his very soul. When he opens the eyes he didn’t realise he’d clenched shut they’re all staring at him, Diego closest, a hand raised, a hand that was moments ago on his body. He shudders, takes a tottering step back.

In that moment Vanya breaks free of Allison’s hold and rushes to his side, shrugging off her blazer and wrapping it around his waist, covering him enough for decency’s sake. She gives them all a look and words are exchanged, but suddenly he is exhausted. So exhausted. Last night catching up to him. ‘I need to lie down,’ he tells her, voice sounding ragged.

‘Ok, ok,’ she says, putting a warm, comforting arm around him and guiding him back towards the Academy. There is a moment of silence and then the sound of more footsteps, their siblings joining them, and with them comes a murmur of worried conversation. He doesn’t listen, only noting every now and then when Vanya says something, sounding snappish and annoyed, strangely confident, not like her old thirteen-year-old mouse of a self. 

They get back to the Academy to face their father, a tone of interrogation, and then more snappish replies from Vanya as he’s gently transferred to their mother’s grasp. He can hear a fight starting up behind himself, his father versus his siblings, Vanya versus all of them, and he wants to go back, to stand by her side, but he’s just so tired and it’s so easy to let Mom spirit him away to his room, help him out of what passes for his clothes and into his pyjamas, and then tuck him into bed. Each time she tries to take the bag with the perfume from him he resists. She’ll take it to his father. There will be questions. In the end she gives up and he curls around it and pulls the covers over his head, falling to sleep the moment he clenches his eyes shut.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be honest- this chapter is not, strictly speaking, necessary for the plot. It's just that ever now and then one feels like writing a sex nightmare, so sex nightmare we have. For clarity's sake I will point out that the Klaus starring in his sex nightmare is in his grown-up, thirty-year-old body, because there will be no underage- even if only physically- smut in this fic. 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: Maybe at this point check the tags, but otherwise disrespectful sex, if that makes sense. 
> 
> I hope you all forgive me my self-indulgence, and thank you all for your kind reception of this story, for leaving comments and kudos, and bookmarking it, and subscribing, I appreciate it greatly. 
> 
> Oh, and I'd also like to say that any internalised slut-shaming that Klaus is engaging in reflects the psychological state of the character and not the opinions of the author. You do you, as long as you're safe and as long as you're enjoying yourself and want to be doing what you're doing.

The pumps have to be at least six inches, stilettos, the heels less than a quarter of an inch at the tip. He can barely stand in them, ankles trembling, always on the verge of giving out, body, back, legs, ass all contorted as he uses the arms he has pressed against the oil-slick smooth surface of the white wall in front of him to keep his balance. His face presses there too. Breath fogging out in front of him, plum-purple bruise coloured lipstick leaving smears behind as he mouths at nothing, longing for another person’s tongue, a couple of fingers, a cock, anything in his mouth to suck on.

There’s a cock in him though. Not the first. He’s lost count. This one feels big, slick, too smooth for flesh. He can feel a pair of tits jiggling against his back, warm flesh, soft, pressing and pulling away with her thrusts. He is caught in the feel of the harness around her hips slamming against him, buckles that feel like they’re bruising. The dildo, a massive obscenity of a thing, is gliding along on a river of other people’s cum. He feels used and dirty and perfect each time an out-thrust pulls some loose to dribble and slick and slime across his crack, his thighs, the stay-up stockings sticking to his sweaty skin with their silicon bands. 

She’s calling him a cunt and a whore, reminding him how much his body is made for this, how much his very existence is an invitation to abuse. He laughs, grinding his hips back. He knows she despises him right this moment as he dangles on her cock. He doesn’t care. It feels good. Let her hate him as long as she services him the way he likes.

A punishing thrust, her hand wrapping tight around his neck, and he shudders, split, two minded, one part screaming _nononononononono get your fucking hands off me!_ the other relaxing into it, pressing his throat into the press of her digits, cutting off his own air, riding the high of asphyxia. 

And now she’s someone else. A man he thinks, uncut, cockskin pulling and dragging at his hole and making his knees weak, making him mewl. He loves this. He _was_ made for this. Man or woman or inbetween or neither, he has never cared, as long as were willing to shove something up inside of him, up his ass, in his mouth. His first fantasy to his last, it will always be this. The all-encompassing theme of his sexuality.

‘Fuck me,’ he whines through his constricted throat, humping backwards and losing his balance on the spindles of his heels, feeling the man surge forward, squish him against the wall, pinioned on that perfect cock. Another hand joins the first around his throat and they both clench down, taking the last of his air, dragging him full body into the haze. He comes then, again, a weak, thin splatter of fluid squirting from his cock and further slicking up, stickying up, the inside of the silky dress pushed up around his hips. He feels the next load deposited inside him, the rough, grinding thrusts burying it deep.

The hands disappear. The cock changes. Thinner, longer, smoother. Probably cut this time. This new set of hands at his waist, pawing at the dress, pulling it up and dropping it down again, his returning hearing full of how pretty he looks stretched around this man’s cock. ‘Yes,’ he moans, body shuddering, riding the seasick waves of having come too often, of having just been strangled, ‘Call me pretty.’

A harsh, unloving slap to one ass cheek. The words ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ then another slap, another, not teasing little spanks, but punishingly hard, as though he is being lashed with flame, the pain surging through him and making him feel helpless and stupid. It feels good, he’s about to come, but he wishes it would stop. A final slap and the words ‘No one would miss you if I killed you right now,’ and he comes again, the merest splatter of fluid, legs going out from under him.

He’s falling, collapsing in on himself, caught by rough hands on his hips, he manages to get a grip on the wall, bent forward, legs splayed, head banging harshly against the slick surface in front of him as the man thrusts roughly. He can’t quite catch himself, he can’t catch his breath, he’s falling to nothing— The man comes, thrusts rough, and then, the moment he’s done, lets him go.

He’s falling. He’s—

Caught. Gentle hands slide up the front of his torso and help him back upright, steadying him with a firm grip on his hips as he totters into a more comfortable position, once more half-leaning on the wall, the cool slickness of it a relief against the overheated muddle of his head. ‘You are so beautiful,’ s voice says, a kiss pressed to the side of his neck.

‘ _Dave_ ,’ he sighs out, turning his head back to catch those lips with his own. The other’s dog tags feel warm, heavy against his chest.

They kiss, slow, languorous. The man behind him is a comforting weight, pressing close, embracing instead of holding him in place. Those hands, those big, strong hands wander across his skin, rubbing the silky smoothness of his dress against his flesh, before burrowing underneath, pawing at his thighs, finding their way between to cradle his cock, half-hard and oversensitive. He shudders, whining, and grinds his hips back against the cock he can feel still inside his lover’s pants. 

‘Do you want it Princess?’ Dave asks, the words breathed into the warm, moist air between their faces. ‘Do you want me to fuck you? You know I’ll never do anything you don’t want.’

‘But you did,’ he sobs, pushing in close to catch Dave’s lips again. The memory is there, Dave, the blood, the end, the pain with it, but he doesn’t let himself fall into it right now. He pulls away just enough to whisper ‘Yes. Yes, fuck me.’

‘Let’s get this dress off you baby,’ Dave murmurs against his lips. ‘You look so pretty in it but I want to see you.’ 

He feels warm hands slide across his back, catch the zip, pull it down, the dress splitting, peeling away like skin from a carcass. He looks down as it falls to puddle around his ankles. White silk, stained with something dark, too dark to be blood, something _black_.

Dave steadies him as he steps out of it and kicks it away, standing in nothing but the pumps and stockings. White, both white. Like a bride. 

He feels delicate right now, feminine in that way that’s rarely got anything to do with the real-world strength of women. He feels breakable the way he has only ever felt the few times he’s felt cherished. It makes a blush rise to his cheeks. It makes him feel fluttery and strange and when Dave pushes in close he gasps and raises his tattooed arm to hide his face. His heart is a hummingbird in his throat. 

‘You still want this Princess?’ Dave asks, thick, warm fingers running oh-so gently across his burning flank and back, tracing the contours of him to where he wants those fingers the most, where he’s open and hot and throbbing and slick. ‘You’re so wet for me.’

‘Put it in me,’ he breathes out, the words warm against his own skin. ‘Please baby, I need you.’

‘Don’t hide from me,’ Dave says, a gentle touch turning his face enough that they can kiss again. ‘Please, never hide from me.’ He feels it then, hard cock freed from pants, a hand back there as Dave guides it in, and—

He sighs as it slips inside. Perfect. 

Dave crowds him close to the wall, that beloved body covering his own body, but it doesn’t feel smothering or confining or controlling, so much as he feels sheltered and protected and oddly cherished. It keeps him weak and fluttery, almost nervous, every thrust coming almost unexpected, shattering through him like he’s a virgin on his wedding night. The praise helps, the soft and loving words whispered into his ear in between kisses against his neck, his shoulder— once upon a time he would have been mortified, embarrassed, uncomfortable to be touched like this, spoken to like this— but his time with Dave made him soft and now it’s what his body _craves._

Dave is good. Dave is good to him. Dave is good at this. At fucking. He’s got the pace just perfect, driving, forceful without it being too rough, too brutal, more thrusts than not hitting him where he needs it, making him shudder and whine, making him cry out until his lover lets him grab the man’s hand and pull it to his mouth to suck on those strong fingers. He feels their tips slip over the edges of his tongue, his hard palette, the insides of his cheeks. Almost. Almost.

He comes the moment that other hand slips around to his front, cradling his cock once more, squeezing the aching length just right, just enough to focus all the unfocused haze of pleasure he’s become. He thinks he’s coming dry at this point, like his body’s the body of a girl who doesn’t squirt, and that sends shivers racing over him and makes him suck all the more on the fingers in his mouth. 

He feels it as Dave gets closer to coming, the words breaking off in favour of the man mouthing at his skin, unfocused but affectionate. He gently pulls the fingers from his mouth to encourage his lover on. ‘Come on baby, cum inside me,’ and ‘I want it baby, I want it,’ and ‘you feel so good, you fuck me so good.’

There. Dave grinds deep, adds to the slick mess inside of him, the filth—

_Oh._

What has he done?

Cold. He feels cold. Dave doesn’t seem to notice. All those words, all those things everyone has ever said about him— He should have said no. Dave deserves better, always did deserve better, no matter what the man had said. It’s not like he lied. He told him that he wasn’t a virgin, that there had been a _lot_ that had come before, that he’d lost count of how many people had fucked him long before they ever met, but Dave had never acted like he was disgusted. Everyone acts like they’re disgusted. Dave probably should have been disgusted—

He can barely feel the kisses being pressed to the back of his neck, the way they’re trailing down, the sensation of those hands at his hips as Dave steadies himself as he drops to his knees. The kiss at the small of his back. The hands on the cheeks of his ass. The kiss pressed to his tailbone. The tongue trailing down, chasing the smears of other people’s cum as well as the man’s own—

He doesn’t mean to lash out. He doesn’t mean to push Dave away, but he does, and he’s whirling around the moment it’s done, reaching out to catch the man, apologies spilling in streams from between his lips— 

Dave falls, arms outstretched. Eyes open. Face blank. Empty. 

That face is smeared in black, oily looking, darker than the abyss, as is his groin, his hands, and in the centre of his chest a ragged wound, bigger than he remembered, not spilling red this time, but more of the black, bleeding out, spilling out around him like a halo on the slick white ground. 

He looks down, sees it smeared all over him, the white of the stockings, the satin pumps, the darker expanse of his skin, everything. He raises his hands, smeared, stained, and it’s like last time, except this time— it’s him. This is the stain of what he is spilling out into the world, contaminating everything he touches, everything that touches him. 

_Dave._

He lurches forward, intending to go to the man’s side, but the shoes betray him and he falls, hard, landing with a cry, feeling the bruises form, and when he looks up Dave is gone, and in front of him, in that neat black suit, stands—

‘Time to wake up, Babydoll.’


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have a chapter from Diego's perspective. Thank you all for reading, leaving kudos and commenting, and I hope you all have a lovely rest of the week.

[Diego]

So Vanya thinks there’s something wrong with Klaus, or that something happened to him. Which, ok, there’s always something wrong with Klaus, and they’d all tried to tell her this before she’d stomped off and is now not talking to any of them. Which isn’t exactly what any of them wanted, but the fact she even told their _dad_ to leave Klaus alone when the man was having a fit about him sneaking off and returning, with Vanya, and without his pants, might indicate some growth in her personality. Five thinks it’s a step forward at least. 

He had told them after Vanya stormed off that Klaus had lost someone he loved— supported by a distracted and not particularly caring statement by Five that he must have met them when he’d time travelled back to 1968, which, ok— and that maybe he was still a bit upset about that. It makes sense doesn’t it? He knows that he, himself, is still upset about Eudora, even though she is, actually, right this moment, technically still alive, and even though he still hasn’t managed to process the emotion past the acknowledgement that it’s there. At least with Mom and Pogo walking around where he can see them he doesn’t have to think about how he feels about their deaths. 

There had been a few raised eyebrows at the notion of Klaus actually being in love, as well as a general unspoken consensus that whatever their brother felt probably wasn’t all that serious— from everyone but Ben, who seems to think that Klaus really is cut up about this _Dave’s_ death. A guy. Huh. Not really that much of a surprise. Himself, he’s inclined to agree with Ben, and he thinks all in all everyone’s being a bit harsh. His own interactions with Klaus indicate to him that the man really probably did love this guy and that he really probably is a bit heartbroken right now. Though getting the others. Luther. To listen is the same up-hill battle as always. 

Then Klaus wakes up, wanders out of his room clean and dressed, and gets escorted by their dad, of all people, actually doing the escorting himself for once, instead of getting Mom to do it, into the study where he is now getting a thorough dressing down. 

It’s not like he means to listen. It is not his intention to listen. It’s not like he’s spying at keyholes or anything— but his father is shouting in there. The thing about Reginald Hargreeves— well, not _the_ thing, but _a_ thing, is that even when he is incredibly angry with you, he might raise his voice, well, he’ll _always_ raise his voice, but he never outright shouts. Shouting, showing that much emotion— it’s too much like showing he cares about what you’re doing, and that’s too much like he cares about _you,_ so even furious he is usually cold, analytical and incredibly contemptuous.

Usually.

Right now he’s shouting. Now, he doesn’t catch all of the first part of what their father says, but he catches enough to reconstruct it into something like _‘This behaviour is unacceptable! I was under the impression you were maturing into a responsible, clear headed young man, and now I am confronted with this! Drinking! Running around on the streets at all hours! Doing whatever it is you have done to the cameras in your room! Even convincing your sister that she should abandon her education in favour of **playing hooky**!_’ Then, he quite clearly hears— and this might just be because at this point he’s made sure no one’s around and has his ear pressed against the study door— ‘Furthermore your mother tells me that when you did return you were without your shorts, **and** that an entire set of your uniform has gone missing. Unacceptable! What do you have to say for yourself? How can you explain this sudden change in behaviour?!’

There is a pause, before Klaus giggles and replies with ‘Sometimes actions have consequences young man,’ in a tone that means he’s probably actually shaking his finger. At their father. Well shit. 

‘Is this about—‘ dad breaks off, clears his throat, and when he resumes his tone is once more level and indifferent. ‘I have never seen a child respond so poorly to a simple bit of training. This carry-on is quite excessive.’

‘Oh, excessive—’ Klaus scoffs, and then, loudly, each word perfectly enunciated, ‘fuck you, dad.’

‘Language young man!’ their father snaps. ‘If you keep this up I will forbid you to go on any future missions!’

‘Forbid away. I do not care.’ Then the sound of footsteps coming closer. He moves away from the door, trying to look like he wasn’t just spying. 

‘Where are you going?’ he hears, muffled, ‘Come back here at once!’

‘Make me.’

‘If you do not cease being so non-compliant I will—’ 

The footsteps stop, and when Klaus speaks next time it’s very loud, as if he’s just on the other side of the door. ‘What? You’ll what? Beat me? Kill me? Lock me away in the dark?’ A pause, and then Klaus speaks again, tone dark and almost mocking, ‘Do your worst.’ Another giggle, though it doesn’t really sound that amused. ‘Oh wait. You already have.’

He darts away from the door and around the corner to watch, unobserved, just in time to see his brother emerge from the study and stalk away in the other direction, without looking back. A moment later he sees their father appear at the study door, staring after Klaus with an odd, contemplative look on his face, before he turns around and shuts the door behind him. 

After that he goes to find Vanya. He finds her sitting and reading some book in the library. ‘So, what do you think is wrong with Klaus?’ is the first thing he says when she looks up at him with something like disdain.

Her mouth is open, an obvious dismissal there, but his words stop her. She frowns. ‘Why? You didn’t want to listen to me earlier.’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I think you were right. He doesn’t seem like himself.’ He knows full well that Klaus doesn’t have a very high opinion of their father, same as him, same as all of them other than Luther, but there’s that and then there’s the open mockery? Or sarcasm? He heard in his brother’s voice. 

‘He seems sad—’ she begins, then shakes her head. ‘No. I’m not sure sad is the right word. I don’t know what the right word is. Upset? Distressed? Unhappy?’ She looks at him for a moment, assessing, and suddenly he feels very small and very pathetic. Even though they’re not blood that look is straight from the face of their father. After a moment she seems to have made a decision, because she goes on to say, ‘I found him burning a bunch of clothes yesterday, clothes he told me he bought the day before, and when I asked him about why he was burning them he said he’d had an “accident.”’

‘What kind of accident?’ he demands. 

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. But talking about it made him look even more upset.’

‘Show me these clothes.’

She takes him out into the garden and the pair of them stand and stare down at a blackened pile of melted synthetic fabrics which is probably going to leave a mark. There’s nothing much to see. There’s no part of it that didn’t catch light, that isn’t burnt, so he can’t examine it for clues. He can’t even tell what the tarry mass was, other than there were a pair of platform shoes like the ones Klaus was wearing when they found him and Vanya, and that’s only because the soles survived the conflagration relatively intact. 

‘You sure he didn’t tell you anything more about why he was burning them?’ he asks her. 

She shakes her head. It’s kind of weird standing here, just the two of them. Ever since she lost her temper with them earlier everyone decided to give her a bit of space, so for the first time since they’ve all been back he’s alone with her. Before now there was always at least one of the others, though usually Luther _and_ Allison. He feels uneasy.

Once Five had explained that the apocalypse could probably be diverted— if his calculations are correct— by making Vanya feel less isolated, more a part of the family, more cared about and loved and all that, and that this would be most effective if it started when she was younger— hence the reason they are all now thirteen again— he kind of got on board. Well, everyone kind of got on board. He just hasn’t really thought about it until now. Hasn’t really thought about what he really feels about Vanya until now. And now he realises he doesn’t really know her that well and that he’s still kind of angry with her for writing about him in her book. It had made him feel very—

Well, Eudora once told him that she had made him feel vulnerable and that’s why he’s angry with her, so maybe that’s right. He just— He can’t be angry with her. She’s only a kid right now, not the person that wrote those things about him, and even if she wasn’t a kid if he gets angry with her he might accidentally end the world. It’s actually really fucking stressful.

He’s glad when Ben shows up, drifting over to stare down at the melted remnants with them. ‘What are we looking at?’

Like always when he sees Ben he’s faced with this terrible desire to pull him into a tight hug and maybe punch himself in the face in some sort of panicked flail of inability to deal with initiating that kind of contact where someone might see him. He clears his throat. ‘Apparently Klaus started a bonfire yesterday—’

‘That’s a very small bonfire,’ is what Ben says.

‘He was burning some of his clothes,’ Vanya adds.

‘Hm,’ Ben murmurs. 

Since there’s nothing really to be seen looking at the blackened puddle they soon end up going their separate ways, or, Vanya goes back to her book and he follows Ben to ask, ‘Is something up with Klaus? I figure if anyone knows it’s you, you’ve spent more time with him than the rest of us.’

Ben shrugs. ‘It’s not like I spent every one of his waking moments with him. Sometimes he’s hard to be around—’ a sigh, Ben rubs a hand roughly over his face. ‘I have witnessed some truly awe inspiringly self-destructive behaviour from him, and that’s not easy to see, to not be able to do anything about.’

‘So you think it’s just Klaus being Klaus?’

A pause and then Ben is looking at him, looking very serious— not that he’s not usually serious— but this is serious in a different way. ‘I’m not sure, and the fact that I’m not sure kind of worries me.’

The whole thing starts to worry him too. The question is whether he should bring these worries up with the rest of their siblings. The bossier siblings. Luther, Five, Allison. He is not sure.

He is still thinking about it when Klaus finds him later. Thinking about it while also checking over his knives, making sure they’re all in good condition, that none of them need sharpening. ‘I was thinking—’ is what Klaus says, slinking into the room in a way that’s disconcerting from his thirteen-year-old self.

‘What?’ he asks, trying to sound open and welcoming, not sure if he’s succeeding. Maybe if he spends some time with his brother he’ll be able to determine if something actually is wrong, or if, as stated, it’s just Klaus being Klaus. They’ve spent enough time together recently that he might actually have a chance of being able to tell.

‘Well,’ the other boy says, flopping down into the seat next to him, but not touching him. He’s once more dressed in his boys’ uniform, though those shoes, those slides, are on his feet instead of his loafers. ‘You know how we were all pretty dismissive of how hard it was for Five coming back and being stuck thirteen again? And, you know, not exactly being all that helpful at first, with the apocalypse and all—’

‘Yes?’ he says, already getting impatient.

Klaus takes a deep breath and gives him a wide smile. ‘Well— I thought we could do something nice for him.’

He sighs, he can’t help himself. This is going to be trouble, that look always is. ‘And you have the perfect idea?’

‘Yes I do,’ a little, excited clap, and here he expects some unwanted physical contact, but Klaus keeps his hands to himself. ‘I just need your help.’

‘Help with what?’

Somehow Klaus talks him into helping break into a department store that night to _liberate Delores and return her to the arms of her one true love._ It all goes surprisingly smoothly, more smoothly than he would have expected. Klaus is actually sober and relatively focussed, they break in, retrieve Delores, Klaus admittedly sees her and is all “Oh honey, I can’t bring you back wearing _that._ What’ll he think? We need to make you into a bombshell, remind him of all he’s been missing.” Which does lead to ten minutes of fussing around and ignoring his insistence that Klaus _hurry_ before his brother is happy with the peach chiffon dress the man eventually choses, after discarding a red one because “grumpy old man like him might think it’s sending the wrong message” and a black one as “too funereal, we really don’t want him thinking of dear old dad when he should be pitching woo.” 

They leave after wiping the security footage, carrying Delores, the entirety of Delores, split in two parts, anything the most prudish of prudes might consider inappropriate concealed by the lacy lingerie Klaus also picked out. He doesn’t really want to think about it. Any more than he wants to think of Five being stuck in the future, growing old in the future, with only a store mannequin for company. There are some icky thoughts down that path.

‘Are you sure we shouldn’t be trying to get him a girlfriend?’ he finds himself asking, ‘Instead of setting him up again with a store dummy?’

Klaus looks over at him, Delores’ lower half carefully nestled in his arms. ‘You really want to set our old man brother up with a thirteen-year-old girl?’

‘What?’ he yelps as the reality of what that would entail registers. Five might look like he’s thirteen but he sure as hell doesn’t act like he’s thirteen. That would be— creepy. Wrong. Criminal, or at least it should be. ‘No. No. I was thinking more a girl our own age.’

‘Who is into thirteen-year-old boys?’

Ok. That’s equally as wrong. ‘Yeah, I get your point. Hopefully we can get all this sorted and go back to the future, and this time none of us will be stuck in these weird kid bodies.’

‘Yeah,’ Klaus says, but then doesn’t say anything more, and the way he said it didn’t sound completely convinced. He doesn’t get it. He would have thought Klaus would be clamouring to be changed back, especially considering most of the activities he prefers getting up to. 

Once they’ve delivered Delores to Five’s empty room they go their separate ways, Klaus off to do whatever, him off to— Well, he’s not really sure. It’s late. He feels uneasy. He passes Five, sitting and reading with Vanya and Ben, Luther and Allison nearby, looking like they want to jump in and say something, do something, anything to break the quiet. He ends up sitting next to them, shrugging when Luther asks where he’s been. ‘Out. I had to run an errand.’

Surprisingly the other man lets it go at that. That’s probably good. He doesn’t know what he’d say of asked further questions. It sticks with him, the way Klaus had dodged anything even remotely resembling physical contact. The memory if his brother bent almost double, the demand that he not touch him almost vomited out of his mouth, eyes wild. He’d hate it if Vanya was right after all.

The next morning she comes to find him, early, a frown on her face. Vanya. She tells him that she forget to tell him about this strange woman that approached her and Klaus just before everyone turned up and started behaving like an ass, and how this woman gave Klaus a fancy looking bag with something in it he didn’t let her see. She also says there was a card and that when Klaus read it he’d looked scared. 

Well, shit.

‘Tell me about this woman.’


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a very productive weekend, which means I got this finished a day earlier than I thought I would. We're back with Klaus again for this chapter, which covers some of what happened in Diego's chapter as well as some other stuff. It's kind of weird writing from Klaus' perspective, the way I'm writing him means that there's a level of emotional and (especially) physical vulnerability there that's very different than the sort of character I usually gravitate towards. It's interesting.
> 
> I hope you all had a lovely weekend and are having a good week so far, and thank you all for reading, writing, leaving kudos and for receiving this fic so well in general. I really appreciate it!

Jacques is back when he opens his eyes, watching him from that spot leaning against the wall. ‘You’re back,’ he says, and then ‘Where were you yesterday?’

A smirk. ‘Don’t worry yourself Babydoll, I simply had an errand to run.’

His mind shies away from what he can remember of the dream. That’s not a thing worth thinking of. He sits up, slowly, carefully, feeling very, very tender. As if his soul itself is bruised. As he moves Dave’s dog tags slide against the skin of his chest, and he reaches for them even as he feels the bag with the perfume bottle shift from his grip, coming to rest on his lap. He looks down at it, runs a finger across the satin ribbons of the bag’s straps. ‘Is this the errand?’

A shrug, ‘I remember that you liked it— and I liked the way it smelt on you.’

‘You were there,’ he murmurs, remembering the hands on him. ‘You used my powers to make yourself corporeal.’

No reply, just a smirk. 

‘How?’ Again, no reply. ‘Did you do the same thing when you killed Dave— not my Dave, _David_? Is his death my fault? How about that woman yesterday? How did you run this errand of yours? And how did you stop me? You held me still, you just made the needle _vanish!_ ’ By the end he’s starting to sound a little hysterical. 

For a moment he thinks Jacques is going to continue not to respond, but eventually the ghost says, ‘That man’s death isn’t your fault Darling, he was going to put his hands where they weren’t wanted.’

‘ _Hands,_ ’ he scoffs. ‘You mean his _dick?_ That wasn’t his idea, I volunteered, I _consented,_ he just went along with it.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it was a terrible hardship for him,’ Jacques sneers, before shaking his face back to blankness. ‘It’s not your _feelings_ on the matter that concern me. Apparently even ghosts can change. You’re a kid right now, there’s that, but— I’m not used to thinking of myself as a jealous man, Babydoll.’ 

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ he snaps. Jealous? What? If Jacques really has been lurking around perving ever since he was a kid the first time around the ghost has seen plenty of things to make him jealous. Realistically there should have been hundreds, at least, of people with their throats cut. ‘You’re not making any sense. Make sense!’ he demands. 

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head, Darling. It’s something dear old Jacques has to deal with himself,’ the ghost says, dismissive. As if he really is a child. A brainless child. It’s infuriating.

‘Oh, that’s just profoundly unhelpful. Are you at least going to explain any of what I’ve seen you do?’ He pushes the covers back and climbs out of the bed, still holding the bag with the perfume. ‘And stop with all the pet names!’

A snort of laughter. ‘How about we go with “no” to both those demands.’

‘Then you can just fuck off!’ he replies, middle finger up and directed at the ghost. That just nets him more laughter. 

Irritated he shuts the bag with the perfume in it in one of his drawers and goes about getting ready for his day, pleased no one is in the bathroom so he can have a wash, even if not long afterwards Allison starts banging on the door and demanding he hurry up. 

It seems like his father descends upon him the very moment he steps out of the bathroom. The argument that follows is pretty much exactly what he expected— other than the mention of something being wrong with the cameras in his room— and he has to be honest. He’s kind of over it. He doesn’t want this bullshit between them, doesn’t want the fear he still feels when he sees the man’s face, hears the man’s voice, he doesn’t want to be dressed down like a naughty child. So, maybe, just maybe, he might have been a bit— is it rude? Honest seems the most accurate way of terming it. 

He almost doesn’t believe it when he is just allowed to leave. When there is no punishment. He would think talking back like that would net him another stay in the mausoleum, if nothing else. But, no. No punishment. Or if punishment, then punishment deferred until Reggie-poo works out how he _can_ punish him. What power does their father have over them if they stop letting themselves act scared? Now there’s a thought.

He goes back up to his room to smoke the second of the cigarettes Vanya gave him, Jacques standing by, silent. As he’s nearing the filter he thinks to himself that he really needs to find a way to get some more— but of course, he’s thirteen, so he can’t exactly walk into a shop and buy some— doesn’t really matter though, does it? Last time he was thirteen he mainly bought his cigarettes from the same people he got his weed from. All he needs is money, money— his eyes dart towards Jacques— money not _favours,_ but money is an issue for another day. Cigarettes too. He drops the butt in the new glass of water Mom must have left the night before. 

He runs into Vanya as she’s coming in from the garden, a frown on her face. ‘Everything alright?’ he asks her.

‘Of course,’ she replies, and then says ‘Dad hasn’t given me any instructions on what to do today so I’m thinking I might practice my violin. Do you want to watch?’

A moment’s memory of what happened the last time he saw her playing the thing crosses his mind with a shudder. Poor girl. She had ended up so very messed up. ‘I’d love to,’ he says. 

He curls up comfortable in an armchair and watches, eventually letting his eyes shut and letting the music carry him away. She’s very good. She always was. It’s peaceful, the two of them, no family, no ghosts other than the silent Jacques— wait. Why no ghosts other than Jacques? 

His eyes snap open, gaze wandering the room, seeing nothing, no horrors, then coming to rest on the shadowy figure leaning against the wall and listening to his sister play with evident enjoyment. He’s sober. There should be ghosts. Is Jacques keeping them away? Oh, right now who cares? He closes his eyes again, lets himself enjoy the moment.

A few times as she’s playing the door opens and he opens his eyes to see some sibling or another peering in, none of them brave enough to step into the room while she has the violin in hand. Cowards. At least this means they leave them alone— and it’s funny to think he wants them to leave him alone. He wants to be alone right now. Alone aside from Vanya. Vanya he doesn’t mind. The rest— maybe he’s a little upset with them for not caring about him right now. It’s probably not justifiable. It’s nothing new after all. And it’s not like feeling the way he does towards them changes the fact he feels culpable for the things that have happened to him himself. He knows it’s his fault. Unfortunately being a person is a complicated matter and he can’t just bring his feelings into line the way he wants to. 

He can make himself do things he doesn’t want to do though. Or doesn’t want to do _right now_. He can remember the look of surprise on Diego’s face when he’d shouted at him— he’s still not sure what that was, it’s just that he feels— it must be something about Jacques, something about being back here, something about having been shoved in the mausoleum, about all his memories and all his realisations. It’ll go away. There have been times in the past he hasn’t wanted to be touched— admittedly the sensation wasn’t as strong as it is now— and they’d all gone away. Also, admittedly sometimes because people had touched him no matter what he wanted and it feels easier to just give in to it at times like that. If you enjoy it at least you’re getting something out of it, right? Right?

He finds Diego playing with his knives. If only that was a euphemism. But Diego is Diego and Diego is eternally uptight. The thought of him actually having a girlfriend— how did that work? Does he cry after sex? Can he even get it up? Can he come? Does he need a good thrashing first, a bit of pain before he can relax enough to feel the pleasure? Or maybe he’s the type that once he lets loose just pins you down and fucks you until neither of you can walk, the kind that you can’t even reason with, won’t hear you if you say _stop_ — a beast in the sack, emphasis on the _beast._

He’s careful to maintain a distance between them as he sits down, though that makes him feel kind of strange. He’s always liked Diego, had a _fondness_ for him, not a fondness born of closeness or familiarity or any particularly reciprocated affection, but maybe a fondness born of the knowledge that for all he talks the talk and walks the walk the other is almost as cripplingly non-functional as he is, himself. 

Five was gone, for so long, and returned he’s— well, he’s an asshole, but he seems to be an asshole who has his shit together most of the time, and the others, well, it’s easy to look at Luther and see daddy’s good little boy, to look at Allison and see a successful celebrity, to look at Ben— poor, dead Ben— and see someone who still has it together no matter how terribly he died— even Vanya. As shameful as it is to admit it, he’d thought she was doing fine in comparison to him. A job, her music, that book she wrote about them all— he was wrong, he’s willing to admit it. Wrong about Luther as well, and probably Allison, but, for the longest time if he thought about Diego he kind of put him in the same category as himself. _Badly_ damaged.

Though, of course, it’s not like Diego would ever acknowledge that particular fact. 

It’s almost worryingly easy to get the other on board with his plan. It’s probably not a very good plan. No one ever accused him of being a good planner. It’s just— he does actually want to do something nice for Five. He doesn’t know what else he can do though— it’s not like Five needs him to intimidate a man with his ability to wantonly harm himself and everyone he loves like last time. Getting Delores back for his brother seems nicer, gentler, a kind and generous thing that doesn’t bring pain or fear to any of them. Maybe he’s tired of being frightened? Of the harshness of their lives?

It all goes off without a hitch. Which is a massive surprise. He’d at least half thought they’d be caught and then their father called and then more drama would descend on their heads, but that doesn’t happen. He even thinks he chose the right dress. The red one was more the kind he’d wear, a bit low in front, cut up high on one leg, but the kind of man Five has turned into, all angry and controlling and a bit repressed, is usually the kind of man prone to bouts of misogynistic slut-shaming in his experience. Of course that’s not his experience with Five, of course he doesn’t really know his brother well enough to say for sure, but even though Delores is only a mannequin part of him hates the idea of her being confronted with some of the stuff he’s had come his way from such men. They have a way of making you feel exactly how dirty they think you are. And not in a good way. The black dress of course was fantastic, but, still, too close to the funeral. The peach is good, virginal but not too virginal, innocent but still womanly, it’s a _wife dressed up nice_ kind of dress. The lingerie on the other hand— he just hopes the two of them appreciate it. He’d pocketed a couple pairs of the panties himself, in hot pink though, not the red he’d chosen for her. Five is the kind of man that should like red when it’s hidden, something secret, wicked deeds done behind locked doors with the curtains drawn tight.

He lies her out on Five’s bed like she’s all dressed up and waiting for him, the last thing he says to her before leaving the room, ‘I hope this is what you want too. I’m sorry if it’s not.’ He feels Jacques watching him, dark eyes intense. It’s offputting. 

He wishes he had a cigarette. Or a joint. Or some cocaine. Or some molly. Or, since he’s back now, some E. Or maybe a bottle of something— at this point grain liquor sounds lovely. But he’s sober, depressingly so, and depressingly he kind of intends to remain so. His gaze flicks to Jacques again, and then away. It feels safer to stay sober right now. Anyway, it’s easier with a body clean of built up dependences. The cravings are only soul deep, a memory, not backed up by a physical, chemical freak out. 

Five screams when he finds her, surprisingly high-pitched, and then there’s an amazing kerfuffle of voices and questions and demands and Diego finally bellowing that it was the two of them, but not his idea, and then a flash of blue light and Five is in his room with him. ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ his brother bellows, stepping in close, threatening. ‘Why would you do that? Are you trying to fuck with me?’

Skin crawling he steps backwards, hands going up between them, fluttery and awkward and self-defensive. ‘I was trying to do something nice for you!’

‘When the fuck have you ever tried to do something nice for anyone?’ Five bellows. ‘You’re selfish. What’s in this for you? Huh? I’ve gotta believe there’s something in this for you or else all I can think is you’re trying to hurt me—’ the boy breaks off, mouth snapping shut, obviously having said too much.

‘No,’ he says, almost whimpers. ‘No, no, no. I’m not. I’m really not. That’s not—I’m just. I’m sorry, ok? For not caring about how hard it must have been to come back and get stuck thirteen again, because I get it now, it is so _hard,_ and for not listening, or believing you, or trying to help you at first. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you—’ oh dear, he’s getting a bit emotionally honest right now. But then, he is sober and it has been a loooooooooooong year. Well, couple of weeks for most of the family, ten and a half months for him, decades for Five.

‘I don’t understand,’ is all Five says. 

‘I thought maybe having her back would be some comfort, for you,’ he says, starting to feel embarrassed and wrong and wishing, again, that he wasn’t sober for this conversation.

There is a long moment in which Five just looks at him, examines him, seems to try and stare through his soul. It makes him uncomfortable. ‘Thanks, I guess,’ is what the other says eventually, and then, ruefully, ‘though we had decided to take a bit of a break. World saved. Or at least I thought world saved. I don’t know what the consequences of bringing her here now will be, it’s only a small change in the timeline, but it is a change.’

‘Oh,’ he remembers Dead David. Who will now get no chance to become one of his dealers in the future. ‘Well, I’m afraid to say more things than that have changed.’

‘What do you mean?’ Five demands to know. 

‘Oh, nothing. Just, you know, things—’ he’s not going to tell his brother about what happened. Aside from the fact he does not want any of them knowing about Jacques, he can’t bring himself to face the recrimination just now. ‘The way we’re behaving. Missions we may or may not be going on. _Not_ , in my case, if Dad can be believed.’

‘You really have been acting out, haven’t you?’ Five says with a frown.

‘Is that a problem?’ he asks. 

A shrug. ‘I don’t particularly care.’ A pause. ‘I guess I’ll get going now. Thanks, again, for Delores.’

‘Um,’ he says, before the other can leave. ‘Just one question—’

‘What?’ 

How to say it? Well, there really is probably only one way. ‘What about Ben? I don’t really, fully understand what we’re doing in the past. I mean, I get that we’re trying to make Vanya feel better so she doesn’t kill everyone, but— Is this the _past_ past? You know, _our_ past? Or is it some parallel dimension? Are we going to have to live our lives from this point? You know, from now until the moment Vanya does, or does not, completely lose her shit? Or are we going to fix her somehow and then travel back to the future, our present, with a past that’s different to the one we’ve lived? And, no matter what version of events is supposed to take place, are we going to save Ben?’

Five blinks, frowns, then takes a deep breath and says, rueful, ‘I actually don’t know. This was a last-ditch effort to save us all. My calculations were only half complete and I didn’t really have time to work the rest of it out; I’ve been working on it since though, trying to work out exactly what I’ve gotten us into—’

‘Oh,’ he says, and then laughs, weakly. He had expected Five to know everything, to be in complete control of the situation— it’s strangely both terrifying and oddly comforting that he’s not. ‘But, Ben?’

A look crosses the other’s face. ‘I am trying, I am doing my best, doing everything I can, to work out a way we can save them both. Vanya and Ben—’ a smile, or maybe a smirk, ‘— and all of the rest of us, of course.’

‘Of course,’ he watches as the other tenses up, body preparing to teleport out of the room. It’s a sudden impulse that makes him say it, ‘ _Diego’s detective!_ ’

Five hesitates. ‘I’m sorry, what?’ 

‘Patch I think her name is—‘ he hesitates, ‘I don’t know what her first name was. She was his girlfriend? Or at least he was in love with her, and she died, trying to save me from Hazel and Cha Cha, which doesn’t seem fair. I know it’s asking a lot, but is there any way you could think of to save her too?’

The other frowns at him ‘You’re being very strange.’

‘How am I being strange?’ he snaps, offended, though not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s just the way Five is looking at him.

A snort is what his offense earns him, and the words ‘What do you care about Diego’s girlfriend?’

‘You really think I’m an asshole, don’t you?’ he says, and of course it’s true. Even when they were kids Five never liked him. Always looked down on him— he can feel a prickling feeling at the edges of his eyes, in his throat, in his nose. It all hurts. It hurts so much. ‘Like, I know you don’t have a high opinion of me, I know none of you have a high opinion of me, but of fucking course I care that Diego lost someone that mattered to him. Of course I care that you were stuck alone for all those years with only a shop mannequin for company. Of course I care that Ben died, I don’t want Ben to die! I don’t want any of you to die! Do you have any idea what it’s like for me? No. Of course not. And you don’t care.’ He laughs, sounding a little hysterical, ‘We didn’t know what happened to you, do you understand that? You just _vanished._ We didn’t know you were alive— I went _looking_ for you, you know, I’d stay up late, wait till I was all alone and the high was wearing off, and then I’d try to conjure you. I was so scared that one day you’d show up, show up and tell me that you were dead, that you’d died horribly, in so much pain, alone and afraid—’ oh shit, he’s actually crying. 

‘Klaus—’ Five says, voice small, making an aborted movement towards him. He steps back, instinctive.

‘I really do love you, you horrible little shit,’ he gasps out. ‘Now get the fuck out of my room!’

Five flails for a moment, stepping forward, inching back, before whirling around and vanishing. The moment the other is gone he sobs, just once, before sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed and trying to keep the rest of the tears inside. 

‘Oh Dollface,’ Jacques says, squatting down in front of him and trying to meet his eyes. ‘I’d kill him for you if I didn’t know that would just make you unhappier.’

‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ he hisses, peering at the ghost from between his fingers.

‘I won’t—’ Jacques says, black eyes meeting his own, handsome face in all its strangeness, wrongness, so very close. ‘As long as he never puts you in danger.’

‘I don’t care if I’m in danger,’ he feels exhausted again. Strung out. Like a violin string pulled so tight it’s about to snap. ‘I don’t care, just don’t hurt them. Don’t hurt any of them.’

‘Well the problem there Babydoll—' the ghost says, reaching out and wiping a tear from his cheek. The touch is cold, ephemeral, but still palpable. He shivers at its strangeness. ‘—is that I care.’


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we have a chapter from Allison's perspective, I hope you enjoy. Thanks to everyone for reading, leaving comments and kudos, and for doing all you have been doing to let me know you like my writing!

[Allison]

Honestly at this point she’s just completely emotionally exhausted. There are a lot of things about herself that she feels she’s been forced to confront in the last year— her misuse of her powers, her inherent perception of the world as something designed to give her what she wants, how much she loves her daughter— a person who is not herself, how much she is capable of feeling regret, how bad a sister she was to Vanya, her resentment of her father, her feelings— evidently just as strong as they ever were— for Luther— also her near obliterating fury at the man. 

As far as she can see it he was the major contributing factor, at the time, for Vanya losing it the way she did. That is not in any way a statement designed to absolve their father of the majority of the guilt, or them, the way they bought into the lie they were sold, the way they were so eager to ignore her, to treat her like absolute shit— but if he hadn’t unilaterally decided to lock her in that horrifying chamber, and then, when that backfired, hadn’t decided the only thing to do was _kill_ her instead of trying to _help_ her— 

She is just so angry at him. Sick with rage. Worse yet she still loves him, there’s still a part of her that wants to have a future with him— but he has got to shape up before there’s any chance of that happening. She has informed him of this fact, in great detail, doing her best to beat into his thick head how much he got wrong, how much worse he made everything, how much he jeopardised by being the knuckle-headed idiot their father raised him to be. She thinks maybe he’s getting the message. She hopes he is. 

It’s so strange being in her thirteen-year-old body again. She likes being able to talk, even though it had seemed a fitting punishment for all her transgressions at the time, but the rest of it— the sooner she can be herself again the better. 

It’s just— She is so frightened that this little sojourn into the past will mean that Claire is never born. She needs her daughter to be born. If they’re stuck like this, if they have to live out their lives from this point onwards, the terrible thing is that she’s going to have to re-enact everything she did last time to make sure Claire is born— but she doesn’t remember everything she did last time, and the idea of getting involved with Patrick again— “ _I heard a rumour you wanted to ask me out on a date_ ” — she’s not sure she can do it. Especially now she knows what it is she really wants, even if that something, that _someone,_ has been a massive prick recently.

It’s not like she hasn’t asked Five about Claire, _interrogated_ Five, demanded of Five that nothing be done that might even reduce the chance of her daughter coming into existence by the merest fraction of a percent— but he doesn’t seem able to give her any promises, and has now taken to blipping away whenever he thinks she’s trying to bale him up. It’s _infuriating._

She was trying to again this morning when she encountered Diego sneaking out of Klaus’ room, looking very— she’s not sure. He’s not exactly easy to read, not because he’s very emotionally subtle, just because he’s so intense. Intense and seemingly not all that emotionally complex. This had looked like a complex emotion though. She was going to ask about it, even though she’s furious with him too, him and Klaus, she had heard them arguing with Luther when she went down there and discovered what Luther had done to Vanya— if they’d just taken her side, if they’d all argued with him, if they’d all fought him if it came down to it—maybe Vanya wouldn’t have gone off the way she did. Maybe it would have been apocalypse averted.

Anyway, she was going to ask about it, but then their father was summoning all of them, and when they presented themselves to him they were roundly informed that “I have had enough of all your nonsense! Training will recommence today! We will begin with firearms, something I feel I may have neglected. Number Seven will be joining you as it has occurred to me that, while she is incredibly ordinary, the future is not perfectly predictable and some event may come to pass in which you are all otherwise preoccupied and unable to defend her. Thus her having a way to defend herself is desirable.”

Last time at thirteen this had not happened. As always firearms training came rarely, as it took time away from them developing their powers, and there was no instance in which Vanya was suddenly included in any kind of training. ‘This may be a good sign,’ is what Five says as they’re all scurrying along after their father to the room he’s set up for this training. ‘This may be the kind of change we want to see in the timeline.’

They stand there, lined up, as their father details firearm safety in the same tone, using the same words as he did the first time, and every time after, they ever had firearm training. Behind the man is a line of humanoid dummies— not like the one Five was dragging around— but seeming made of hessian and stuffed with straw, though considerably more lifelike than any straw dummy she’s ever seen before. If she had to guess she would guess that Mom must have been up late the night before making them. Last time they just used paper targets, but she hasn’t the psychological energy to interrogate the motives behind the change right now. 

‘In the case of everyone but Number Seven we will begin by testing what you remember. Today we will be using pistols, and I want disabling shots, headshots, and centre mass shots. Number Seven, with me, the rest of you get equipped.’

They all crowd around the table he gestured to, a row of pistols laid down, empty magazines beside each one along with a box of bullets. They each take a gun, take a magazine, and get to loading them. 

She’s a decent shot, which she credits as much to all the lessons she’d taken in preparation for her first role in an action comedy than to her training at the Academy. As a kid she’d never much liked handling guns, and with her power— her father had gotten angry when she used it on him, but there’d been an easy workaround there— “I heard a rumour you don’t mind it when I use my powers on you.” God, she’d been such a brat. Too much power and not enough understanding of consequences— 

Maybe their father should have spent as much time explaining their powers, their limitations and consequences, to them as he did trying to make them more powerful. 

She does well enough she thinks. Shoulder, shoulder, knee—she misses the other one on the first go— then head— maybe not dead-centre, but so what? And then she aims for the heart. Shoots a little far to the left and down, probable lung shot not heart, maybe gut— but a lung shot will still take someone down, and so will a gut shot in most situations. 

Then she takes a break to assess how everyone else is doing. Five’s target— well, if that was a person and not a dummy that person would never be getting up again. Fuck he’s good. That’s not even clustering, that’s just hitting the exact same spot. Luther is doing ok, about as good as her. Diego seems distracted, intense and unhappy, though that isn’t affecting his shooting if the increasing hole where the dummy’s heart would be is anything to go by— though that’s all he’s aimed at so far. Klaus— is holding the gun and staring at nothing. Is he high? Ben is— Ben is not doing so good, more of his shots going wide, but he never was much a one for combat, and in combat he’d been so OP that he’d never really had to learn precise aim. Vanya— their father is still standing behind her as she’s tentatively taking her first shot—

_Bam._ Nearly dead centre chest. Not quite a perfect heart shot, but good. Very good. Maybe beginner’s luck. _Bam._ Shoulder shot is a bit too close to the torso, but it looks like Vanya might actually have promise. She’s not sure if that’s good or terrifying. 

‘Stop dallying Number Three!’ Reginald snaps, making her jump, whirl back to her target to just graze the dummy’s shoulder. ‘AND YOU, Number Four!’

Out of the corner of her eyes she sees Klaus jump, hand raising the gun and discharging a neat line of bullets in the dummy’s hand, elbow, shoulder, and then right between the dummy’s eyes. She hears him gasp. Then hunch over on himself, arms around his waist. ‘Is there a problem Number Four?’ their father asks, stepping away from Vanya.

They’ve all stopped now, are all watching as Klaus straightens himself up with a grimace pretending to be a smile. ‘I’m fine,’ he says, with a graceful wave of his hand. ‘Fine. Absolutely fine. See—' as he says that he turns back to the dummy and neatly shoots it again between the eyes, before two shoulder shots, two knee shots, and then centre chest. ‘Just fine.’

Their father harrumphs, and then says, ‘Very good Number Four,’ before going back to Vanya’s side. 

Klaus slumps, exhaling something near a sob, before shaking his head and rubbing his unoccupied hand across his face. ‘You ok? she hears Ben say softly as she catches her father looking at her and immediately turns her attention back to shooting. ‘Is it about Dave?’

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Klaus nod, but she misses her next shot in her distraction, so she turns her full attention on what she’s doing and doesn’t see what happens next. 

Their father makes them break for lunch, sitting at the head of the table with an intense expression on his face that doesn’t invite much conversation. Not that much conversation seems to be being supressed. Klaus, ever the babbler, is quiet, staring at his plate and picking at his food, Diego seems like he’s trying to stab his lunch to death, Ben is looking worried at Klaus, Five seems contemplative, Luther is looking at her with puppy eyes, and Vanya is looking both worried about their brother but undeniably pleased with herself— their father’s praise, if you can call ‘Hmph. It seems you have some promise Number Seven,’ praise, still obviously ringing in her ears. 

‘You may have the rest of the afternoon off,’ their father says once they are done. 

‘What?’ slips out from her mouth. It’s some comfort that it escapes Luther’s, Five’s, and Ben’s at the same time.

‘There are matters that require my urgent attention,’ their father tells them, ‘so I do not have the time to be supervising you all. Let me say, however, that this will be the last day for quite some time that you are all permitted such time off. Standards around here have been slipping recently, and I intend to correct this. From tomorrow a full training regimen will resume, for all of you—’ it seems almost as if he includes Vanya in that statement. What that means she cannot begin to guess. 

He leaves them while they’re still confused and a little speechless. Her attention immediately goes to Vanya— remembering how angry with them the girl had been about Klaus— her eyes flicker to the brother in question, still seeming quite subdued. He must be really broken-hearted about this Dave guy. She kind of feels bad for— well, not considering him to be capable of real emotions. Which is actually a pretty terrible thought to have about a person

She should try to do something to make it up to him, but they don’t— they’re not close. In fact she feels less close to Klaus than most of the rest of their siblings. Even when they were kids, were still living in this place— the most they ever had to do with each other was when he’d get into her room and steal her clothes— nothing much’s changed then— or she rumoured him to do something humiliating that he seemed to not even care about. He’s odd, always has been. _Fey_ to use a term she probably shouldn’t be using in the modern world. And not just because he’s— whatever he is. Not straight, that’s obvious. But there has always been something off-puttingly otherworldy about him, something that didn’t fit with the image of what she wanted her life to be. Allison Hargreeves, famous movie star, America’s sweetheart, wanted and worshipped by everyone. 

As Vanya gets up her attention snaps back to her sister, scrambling out of her own seat in turn. Luther is up and out of his a moment after, and they both subconsciously wait for Diego, but he’s still staring at nothing. As she passes Luther on her way to Vanya she puts a hand on his arm, stopping him, and calls out to their sister ‘I thought you and I could do something together Vanya, you know, have some sister bonding time!’ Luther looks at her, but she gives him a quelling look in return, feeling it in the tenseness of his muscles relaxing when he gives up and lets her have her way.

Vanya looks at her for a long moment, dark eyes assessing, before nodding and saying, ‘Klaus can join us if he likes, can’t he?’

She frowns. ‘I said _sister_ bonding time.’

‘I know,’ Vanya nods, ‘But still, he can, can’t he?’

‘I guess so,’ she replies with a helpless shrug. 

Vanya turns her gaze on the boy in question, ‘Do you want to join us Klaus?’

He looks up at her with hazel eyes for a moment, then glances at Vanya. ‘You sure you want me there?’

‘Of course,’ their sister says with a smile, ‘why wouldn’t I?’

He glances back at her, almost wary, before a stupid smile comes over his face and he gets out of his chair. ‘So, what shall us girls get up to? For a variety of reasons I don’t think it should be talking about boys,’ he turns his attention to Luther, ‘No offence dear brother, but if I have to hear how _dreamy_ you are I just might vomit.’

‘Klaus!’ Luther snaps, his face turning a charming pink. She, herself, feels annoyed, but she simply squeezes Luther’s arm once more and moves towards the other two, now standing side by side and waiting for her. She is surprised by the easy way they link arms, almost leaning on each other as they leave the room, no invitation to do so extended to her. What the fuck is going on? Vanya and Klaus were never that close, were they?

‘I suppose we could all braid each other’s hair,’ Klaus suggests, tone not serious, ‘Only— I might need some hair extensions first and—’ he glances at her ‘—I would probably mess yours up, which would be such a shame,’ self-conscious a hand raises to her hair, but he doesn’t seem to be mocking, instead there’s a look of fond admiration on his face. If it wasn’t for Mom who knows what would have happened to her hair, none of the nannies they had before her ever knew what to do with it. ‘I suppose we could both braid Vanya’s— Vanya, do you want us to braid your hair?’

‘Not really,’ their sister says, smiling at both of them. ‘I was thinking we could go out. What do you think of getting doughnuts?’

‘Ooh, exciting,’ Klaus says, clapping his hands. ‘I do hope there’s not a shoot-out.’

‘What are you talking about?’ their sister laughs, bumping her shoulder against their brother’s with easy familiarity. 

‘Oh nothing,’ Klaus waves her off, the smile slipping a little. ‘Just being silly. Now, what do you think you’ll get? I’d usually say cream-filled for me, but maybe this time I’ll go with jelly.’

The two of them start debating the merits of various doughnut varieties. It is surreal. That’s all she can say about it. Surreal. She’s left with the choice of either staying out of the conversation, being with them but not _with_ them, or joining in. So she does. Chattering away about Griddy’s cherry filled, the awareness of the shop being somehow caught up in everything that happened as the world ended making everything even more surreal. From what she can remember though, Griddy’s did make a mean cherry filled doughnut. 

They’re almost at the shop, Vanya and herself debating the merits of sprinkles, the major point of contention being whether the variety of sprinkle makes any major difference, when she glances over at Klaus and almost bites her tongue. He looks so sad. So unimaginably sad. What the fuck? He catches her looking and for a moment their eyes meet and she isn’t sure what she’s feeling, but then the same stupid smile as always comes across his face and that’s that, it’s like the boy she glimpsed, just for a moment, never existed. 

Funny, it awakens an old guilt, a guilt she had actually forgotten existed, but that has to wait till later, after they do go to Griddy’s and have doughnuts, sitting at a table and talking about nothing in particular, being served by a nice blonde lady, and her getting a cherry filled that turns out to be as good as she remembered, Vanya having chocolate, and Klaus getting a jelly filled after much confusion as to whether he wants a cream-filled after all. She watches him as they eat, trying to catch another glimpse of that sadness— it’s there alright, when he thinks no one is looking. Sorrow and fear, two for the price of one, like the promotion they’re currently having on sprinkles as the blonde woman informs them. Vanya pays, which is kind of a surprise, but a nice one, and when they’re ready to leave the girl suggests they bring some back for the boys, so they pick out another selection, each choosing at least one more for themselves. 

When they’re back at the Academy Vanya goes off to use the bathroom while she and Klaus go to find the others to deliver their box of high-caloric goodness. That’s when she brings it up, when it’s just the two of them. ‘Do you remember when we were seventeen and I rumoured you to be in love with Diego?’

He snorts. ‘Because you caught Luther all blushing and speechless and awkward when we rescued those two swimsuit models the week before, and then you decided to get back at him by flirting with that incredibly handsome busker after we foiled that jewellery store robbery a couple of days later— even though you regretted it when he turned out to be a massive, self-absorbed prick— and me and Diego both saw it, and— I can’t even remember why, but you did something that annoyed me so I told everyone, and Diego backed me up when you tried to say I was lying?’

She feels her skin prickle with heat. Maybe not her finest hour. ‘Yeah.’ It had been funny because she’d done it expecting him to make Diego so uncomfortable with incessant flirting and inappropriate touching, and him miserable from being violently rejected all the time, but what had actually happened was that he’d gone all blushing and stupid and ended up hiding from the object of his affections for the next three weeks. 

‘Yeah, I remember it,’ he doesn’t look angry. Is he going to become angry?

She takes a deep breath, even though she’d forgotten about this bringing it up still makes her cringe. ‘It wasn’t that long after that that you left the Academy—’ she bites her lip, ‘—I’ve wondered, since then, if you did so because of me? Because of what I did?’

He frowns, confused ‘Left the Academy. I didn’t leave—’

‘You did,’ has he lost his mind, his memory? ‘When we were seventeen.’

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘No, I was thrown out— did dad tell you I left?’

‘What do you mean thrown out?’ What is he saying?

‘Oh, he did,’ he shakes his head, a rueful smile lingering around his lips. ‘That ruthless old bastard.’

‘What do you mean thrown out?!’ she demands, but then Vanya is back by their side and she has to pretend everything is ok, because there is no excuse for getting their sister involved in any of this.

Later, after eating the doughnuts together, after chatting, after Vanya goes off to practice her violin with Klaus following along like a happy puppy— none of the rest of them are anywhere near psychologically prepared to face Vanya holding the instrument just yet, and she has no idea how Klaus is managing it—she rounds on Luther. ‘Did you know?!’

‘Know what?’ he asks her, giving her those same old confused puppy-eyes.

‘Know that when Klaus left here at seventeen it was because Dad threw him out?!’

‘What are you talking about?’ is what he says, confused, and she stares at him, willing herself to suddenly learn to read minds, to work out if that confusion is genuine— she thinks it is, he’s never been very good at guile.

‘He was thrown out Luther,’ she says, hearing the wobble in her voice. She must look upset because he starts panicking.

‘Are you sure?’ he asks, ‘He wasn’t just making it up for attention? You know what he’s like.’

‘I’m sure,’ she says, feeling her face contort on the words.

He rounds on Ben, ‘Is it true?’ 

Their brother shrugs. ‘Yeah. He was sure you all knew. You didn’t know?’

‘No!’ the two of them bellow in unison. 

Five snorts, finishing the last of the coffee he’d managed to convince Mom to start making for him. ‘This family really didn’t get any less dysfunctional while I was stuck in the future, did it?’ The words seem callous, but his expression is troubled. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, me and Delores have things we need to work on.’

_Bam._ She startles, feels Luther do so next to her, the two of them whirling around to find Diego bringing his fist down on the table again. _Bam._ ‘He was a junkie already by then, wasn’t he?’ the man asks Ben.

Ben shrugs, giving a helpless little nod.

Diego hits the table again. ‘Diego—’ Luther begins, warning, but their brother just talks over him.

‘Seventeen, no work-history, virtually unemployable because of the way he is, and addicted to drugs. How the fuck was someone like that supposed to survive out there alone? Huh? _Fuck!_ ’ the last is shouted as Diego hits the table again.

She exchanges a glance with Luther, then they both look at Ben— who is carefully not making eye contact with anyone. What the fuck is he talking about? ‘What are you—?’ she begins, but Diego gets up.

'I've got something I need to do,’ is all he says as he storms out. 

After a moment Luther speaks. ‘Does anyone else feel like they have no idea what’s going on around here?’


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: for mentions of suicide, prostitution, domestic violence, and probably things I've forgotten. Tell me if I have though. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and the kudos and comments and all of it! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

If Hollywood was going to make a movie based on his time in Vietnam it would be some kind of Oscar-Bait tragedy— not that it didn’t turn into a tragedy by the end anyway— but if Hollywood was going to make it— well, to start with Dave would be the main character, as he should be, and he’d probably be played by some straight guy, or guy pretending he was straight for the world’s many cameras and many accolades for the great sacrifice, and he’d come from some unloving and repressive family, abusive father probably— maybe out in the country somewhere there was a lot of corn.

They’d find love against the backdrop of adversity— maybe he’d be a little bit naughtier, a little bit more knowing, experienced, and he’d seduce Dave into his wicked ways, or maybe he’d be an innocent, just waiting to be debauched, or maybe he’d be out there waiting to die, because his family knew and there was no home for him to go back to— and they’d always have to keep it a secret, making love in the shadows, until sometime near the end of the second act the rest of their squad, or some of the rest of their squad— led by some two dimensional musclehead that would have already been established as being homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic— would have found out and then one or the other or both of them would have been killed by their own comrades, their deaths staged to look like the result of enemy fire. Or maybe he’d die in battle and Dave would survive, only to go back home to his corn-filled, cornbread life, become a farmer, marry the childhood sweetheart the man himself had sworn he’d never had— or maybe they’d be caught and given an undesirable discharge, forced to go their separate ways, or maybe their love would only have lasted to the end of the war— both options leading to Dave once more consigned to farming and childhood sweethearts, one last look over their shoulders as they separated as soon as they landed back in the US—

It just hadn’t been like that. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Dave had a big family that seemed to love him very much, from the endless letters back and forth and how eager to talk to them he was whenever there was a chance at a telephone, from the way he talked about them, from how comfortable he seemed in his own skin— he wasn’t out, of course, but at the same time he’d talked about them living together when they were discharged, about introducing him to his family with notions such as how much his sister Debbie would love him, and how funny his mom would find him— even if she didn’t want to admit to it because she tried to pretend her sense of humour wasn’t as wicked as it was— and how his old man would come around— In Dave’s eyes there was all this hope, all this idea of a future, and not much in the way of shame. 

Dave was proud. Still working out what he was, but the kind of man who, if he hadn’t died, if Dave had gone through the war and ended up back home without a hole in him, probably would have ended up sucked into the gay rights movement. He hadn’t even minded that Dave had looked at him and defined what they were by the shape of his body— a male body equals a man equals a homosexual relationship. He’d never been really able to find the words, had thought there was time for that stuff later. Explaining it all. He thinks, no he _knows_ that Dave would have been ok with it once he understood. The other had been with women before, and men, so he can’t believe someone somewhere in-between would be a problem. No matter the case, even if they’d broken up, there was never going to be a future for Dave where he went back home and crawled back into the closet and got married and had children and spent his life hating himself. That wasn’t the man Dave was. That wasn’t the life he was meant to live. He just wishes they’d had a chance to live the other life, the real life Dave had waiting for him, together. 

The sense of acceptance he’d faced hadn’t just been from Dave, though. The rest of the squad— They had to have worked out what he was pretty early on — or at least that he wasn’t your usual Godfearing straight white male. He’s not subtle, no one has ever accused him of being subtle. So, you know, he’d started expecting maybe being sent back home if he was lucky — not that it was his home, it was still 1968, America or Vietnam, or maybe getting the absolute shit beat out of him, but mainly they’d just ignored it. Maybe made a few jokes about it, occasionally called him by a woman’s name instead of his own— Shirley was a favourite for some reason— but it all seemed to be in good spirits. No harm intended. They’d ignored that he wasn’t supposed to be there either, that there was no trail of paperwork linking back to him, no soldier by his name and matching his description that was supposed to be serving with them. And when it must have become obvious that him and Dave were together. As stated, not subtle— they ignored that too. Like he ignored the furtive handjobs he’d half-witnessed or heard, only every now and then, and shared between soldiers who, for the most part, were never going to gaze deeply and longingly into his eyes, Dave’s eyes, or the eyes of any male-bodied person. Maybe it’s just that there’s an edge of desperation to war, the sense of the end coming, just lurking around the next corner— different people take that differently, but it can be a harrowingly lonely experience for even the manliest of men. The warmth of another body is something, a link back to life, a path away from death— If only for a moment. 

Maybe the Gods _were_ on his side, or _God,_ though she hadn’t seemed to like him much, so he doubts it in her case. Maybe it was just because Dave was a good man, popular and friendly, and a damn fine soldier. Maybe it was because he, himself, was good at spotting a trap and had Ben, and —the moment sobriety slipped in— a veritable multitude of body ruined ghosts, around to point out all the landmines— evil things, landmines— He doesn’t know, will never know, what he does know is that he found more companionship there amongst those men, men who by rights should have wanted him dead, than he has ever felt anywhere else, with anyone else. His own family included. 

He is reminded of all this as his father sets them to firearms practice. The gun feels odd in his hand, cold and heavy. The him of now is a much better shot than the him of before Vietnam. Mainly because while he was there he did everything in his power to avoid making his own ghosts to follow him around and rend at his sanity, to blame him for their deaths. So he had become an expert at _almost_ hitting people, laying down supressing fire that never struck anyone, or getting them in the hand or the elbow or the shoulder so they couldn’t use their weapons— bad wounds, but if the Gods were on _their_ side there was the faintest chance they wouldn’t be fatal, or shooting so the bullet would whistle past their ear, or maybe graze the side of their head— the latter could daze someone, knock them out if he was really lucky. Though most of the time he did his best not to shoot much at all, because it all made him sick, and the ghosts were everywhere, and he could find no justification for all the killing, but _Dave_ was there, Dave was legally obliged and duty bound to remain there— if Dave hadn’t been there he probably would have worked out how to use the briefcase a hell of a lot sooner and come home—

The sound of gunfire reaches his ears. He flinches. For a moment he’s back, staring straight ahead, Dave lying in the bloody red mud in front of him. He’d felt the last pulse of that heart beneath his hand. Heard the last wet and rasping breath—

‘AND YOU, Number Four!’ that voice rattles through his head like something from a nightmare. For a moment the dummy in front of him is whichever nameless, faceless, unlucky/lucky bastard who managed to get that fatal shot in. It starts as a move to wound, to disable, but by the time he’s done shooting he’s put a hole through the Dummy’s head. He breathes, remembers where he is, realises he’s caught his father’s attention. Everyone’s attention.

The rest is pure performance. He’s actually stunned that it nets him the praise it does, and then angry with himself for that little thrill he feels, the excitement of pleasing his father. Ben asks then, if he was thinking of Dave. He nods. He is always thinking of Dave— He can see Jacques circling the dummy, leaning in close to examine the bullet holes he just left behind. There’s a look on the ghost’s face— pleasure? Satisfaction? Approval?— Almost always thinking of Dave.

He misses Dave, in a way he never thought he could miss anyone. Maybe he should put the gun against his own head, give himself a hole to match the dummy’s— No. Not in front of all of them, that would be a very terrible thing to do. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.

He feels strung out, a bad trip on uppers he hasn’t taken. It’s exhausting.

After a lunch he has no appetite for he finds himself sucked into Allison-Vanya sister-sister bonding time. He wonders how much of it is Vanya taking into account what he’d told her about himself, trying to make room for him in the world as the person he is. It’s very kind of her if that’s so. He doesn’t need it though. He is what he is, society’s acceptance or rejection isn’t going to change that. Still, he likes the idea of his family accepting him. Makes something warm glow in the heart of him. 

Allison doesn’t get it, that much is obvious, and he’s not in the mood to try and explain. He knows he’s making it awkward, for her at least, and the awkwardness of it, the way it makes him remember how little she’s ever acted like she really cares about him, makes him act out a bit. Not too much. Just a bit. He gets louder and laughier and less serious, more Klaus as was than Klaus as is. It feels like wearing a mask.

On their way to find their brothers, a box of doughnuts in his hands, he doesn’t expect her to bring up that last time she rumoured him. He’d almost forgotten. He’d been high for most of it, but he does remember— he’d felt so fluttery and strange, shy, around Diego. Every word the other had said had suddenly had the weight of the ages on it, had suddenly been unignorable and profound, important, and he’d felt so soft and sweet and wanted to be good— but by then he’d discovered heroin and had known without being told that any chance he’d ever had to be loved by any of them was over. So, he’d hidden. Tried to protect Diego from the corruption sinking in to himself— it wasn’t the drugs though, not really, just how little he’d cared about what happened to him at that point. 

—Maybe he really does have the Gods’ own luck. The amount of times he’s overdosed, the amount of stupid shit he’s done— he does get tested, every six months like clockwork, and every time it comes back negative. He has never had syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia, genital herpes, genital warts, any of it, and he continues to be HIV and Hepatitis negative— and, if he’s honest, with the things he’s done— it’s a modern miracle—

He’d never held it against her. It had been funny, embarrassing but funny, this look at the person he could be if he ever actually was in love. Maybe funny is the wrong word. Tragic maybe. He was sort of like that with Dave sometimes at first, shy and fluttery but also trying so hard to come off as cool and confident. Dave had seen right through him.

Then she tells him she didn’t know dad threw him out. Unbelievable— or, at least, it’s pretty hard for him to believe, but she seems sincere. Does that mean Luther doesn’t know? Diego? Vanya?— it’s almost funny. There he was all those years, that little resentment he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge— all for nothing. All of them as innocent as lambs.

At the end it’s a relief to get away from Allison. Get away from all of them. More time just him and Vanya, together— he has noticed the similarity, not in character or anything, but the fact they are the two their father saw fit to lock alone in the dark. Unless there are more secrets to come out. Maybe it’s all of them, hiding it from each other— somehow he doesn’t believe that. It’s also a pleasure to hear Vanya play. He’s not exactly one for classical music, but she is so good it’s easy to fall into it, easy to let it flow over him and spirit him away from his cares. It also seems to spirit the mind of one of his cares away, if the look of pleasure on Jacques’ face every time the ghost has heard Vanya play is anything to go by. 

It’s later, when he returns to his room after dinner, that he finds Diego. Diego who didn’t turn up to table— and got away with it because their father was in his study. 

His brother is in his room, sitting on his bed, back bowed, attention on something in his hands. ‘Diego—?’ he queries, standing in the doorway, suddenly afraid to step inside the room and close the door behind himself. 

The man in the boy’s body looks up at him, tongue flicking out nervously between his lips. ‘Come in,’ it’s an order. He hesitates. ‘For fuck’s sake Klaus, get in the room properly and shut the door.’

‘Why?’ he asks, gaze flicking to Jacques as the ghost slinks past him and approaches his brother, examining the man like a lion might look at a gazelle that’s unexpectedly stumbled into its territory. 

‘I need to talk to you,’ Diego insists. ‘So, can you just stop being difficult and come here?’

This feels like one of those situations when you’re with someone and things are going wrong, they’ve hurt you already, and even though they’ve promised not to do it again you’ve done something small to piss them off and you know there’re mere moments left before the violence breaks loose once more, and the way they’re talking to you, trying to get you near, trying to get you in arm’s reach—‘Are you going to hurt me?’ he asks and sees something like devastation cross the other’s face.

‘No!’ Diego declares, getting to his feet. ‘Of-f-f ffff-ucking course I’m not going to hurt you! I just need you to get in the room and to shut the door so I can ask you about this—’ the man waves something, small and white ‘—without the rest of them overhearing.’

‘Is that—?’ he steps forward, shutting the door behind himself. That’s the card, from the perfume. His gaze flies to the drawer he put it in, open, the bag sticking recriminating out the top.

‘What does this mean?’ Diego asks, and he has no idea what the other is thinking. ‘ _Sorry about last night, Babydoll._ ’ Diego shakes his head, starts pacing, body tense and tight with restrained violence, training or instinct or personality making him reach for one of his knives, hand clenching and releasing on the hilt. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like situations like this. He has no idea if Diego is angry with him, if Diego is going to attack him, what Jacques is going to do if his brother does— the ghost is watching Diego very, very closely. Oh shit. It’s hard to catch his breath. His brother starts talking again, ‘Vanya said some strange woman gave this to you, the perfume, and then there’s the way you burnt your clothes— What happened Klaus? Did someone hurt you?’

‘What are you talking about?’ he tries to deflect, hearing the wrongness in his own tone, how unconvincing he sounds. What the fuck is this? Has Diego found out, come to share his disappointment?

‘It’s like you were saying with Five, we look _thirteen_ —’ Diego rambles, ‘If someone laid hands on you, if someone hurt you like that, you gotta tell me. You gotta tell me. Tell me!’ the last is almost shouted, a demand.

‘Why?’ he asks, hearing his voice crack. Oh he really, really doesn’t like this. Is he in trouble? What is Diego going to do to him? Behind his brother he sees the knives appear in Jacques hands, watches the way the ghost starts to play with them, testing their weight, and then juggling them through his fingers like he’s ready to—

‘I’ll kill them,’ Diego meets his eyes, something wild, almost out of control in the other’s gaze. ‘I swear to God, if someone hurt you I’ll kill them.’

‘What?’ the word barely makes it out of his mouth.

‘You’ve been weird,’ Diego says, pointing at him with the knife, he flinches and steps back as his brother continues, ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t been weird. You seem brittle. You don’t want to be touched— don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’re dodging everyone who isn’t Vanya— then there’s the clothes, the perfume, this card. _Babydoll._ What happened Klaus? What happened on the night this card is talking about?’

‘Nothing!’ he bleats. Oh, he does not want to have to talk to Diego about this. He doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone about this. He doesn’t want— right now it all feels toxic, like the words will burn his throat out if he ever tells anyone what he feels, all the things that have happened. ‘Nothing happened!’

‘Then explain this,’ the other says, getting in close, wagging the card in his face. He finds himself backing up until Diego has him cornered, back to the wall. The other is so aggressive. So angry. He feels like Diego is a manifestation of his own self-recriminations. This is going to end badly. ‘This does not sound like nothing. This sounds like—’ 

There’s Jacques, just behind Diego, a knife held so the edge of the blade rests against his brother’s unwitting neck. Black eyes meet his, begging for permission. He can’t breathe. He can’t— everything starts wobbling, the universe distorting, white edging into his vision. 

‘Shit!’ he hears from somewhere far away, and then there’s warmth around his waist, the feeling of arms holding him.

‘Dave?’ he whispers. But it’s not Dave, the heat of the body is different. It’s— ‘Diego.’

‘Sorry,’ he hears, whispered softly against his neck as his brother drags him across the room to the bed, letting him slump down on its surface before moving away. Oh, he swooned. How very dramatic. He lets himself lie back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He’s sure that any respect Diego ever had for him just went out the window. ‘Sorry,’ he hears again, and it makes him look up. Diego’s face is crumpling in on itself, almost as if the other is about to cry. 

He scrambles off the bed and rushes over, fluttering around Diego nervously. ‘No, no, no, no, no it’s ok. Everything’s ok. Everything’s—’ Jacques has retreated, is now standing once more by the window.

‘I didn’t know,’ Diego says, shaking his head. ‘I swear I didn’t know he’d thrown you out, I thought you’d left like the rest of us.’

‘Allison—’ he breathes out. That at least makes sense. Allison went and told everyone— he shouldn’t have told her. What the rest of this is about is beyond him.

There is a moment, Diego obviously struggling to get the words out, and then ‘Wwwhy didn’t you come to us? We would have helped you, _I_ would have helped you,’ Diego sounds so desperate— he really should make a joke right now, try to lighten the mood, try to— it’s just all so confusing, he feels utterly overwhelmed. He needs to make things the way they usually are. Maybe it hurts sometimes, maybe he hates it sometimes, maybe he wishes things were different sometimes, but—

‘Why are you being like this? You all left too— maybe not Luther, but the rest of you. It’s really no big deal—'

Diego shakes his head, ‘We were ready to leave, we had places we were going, it’s different—’

‘Why is it different?’ maybe he should get one of the others, or Mom, Diego is acting really strange. He is probably not the best person to deal with whatever breakdown this is. He doesn’t want to deal with whatever breakdown this is. His eyes once more flick to Jacques. He doesn’t want Diego in his room. ‘What’s this about Diego?’

There is a pause and then the man finally asks, ‘How did you survive out there?’ 

Ah. It seems Diego has come to a bunch of conclusions— admittedly, from what he can guess, fairly _accurate_ conclusions— and is now having some sort of guilt fit about it, even though there is no reason for Diego to feel guilty. His fault. All his fault. Everything his fault. He doesn’t need to go over that again. Anyway, it probably was his fault— all his bad behaviour resulting in getting thrown out, running out of acquaintances that would let him sleep on their couch— he never did really have friends. Just people he got high with or drunk with or partied with or dealers, and none of those really wanted him around if he ever came down. It was probably the talking to people that weren’t there, but not in a fun kind of way, and all the screaming in his sleep— and then running out of ideas as he ran out of what little money he had. So what, he’s traded his ass a few times, and mouth, and hands, and thighs, and on a few notable occasions _feet_ — of course Diego and the others would never understand, see him as dirty (even the him that’s not caught up in self-recrimination is aware that his siblings tend towards the prudish)— and maybe it was more than a few times, but he’s done other things. 

He’s stolen stuff. He did try to work as a dealer for a while, but he doesn’t really have the disposition to handle the product without also imbibing the product. And he’s waited tables, worked in a cinema for a bit— admittedly only about five days— and let a variety of people keep him, though not for very long— and, ok, he may have been to prison a few times— sometimes for things related to the drugs, or the stealing, though most often as a result of the accrual of petty offences the cops like to charge you with if you are lurking around on the streets waiting for a client or your dealer to just stroll on by— wow. He’s shaking. Why is he shaking?

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he tells his brother. ‘I survived, didn’t I?’

Diego’s expression sinks, and he realises that what the other had really wanted was for him to deny all the things Diego hasn’t said out loud. ‘I couldn’t keep you safe—’ the other says after a long moment, sounding tortured, ‘I couldn’t keep Mom safe, I couldn’t keep Eudora safe—' Oh. So that’s actually what this is about. Diego’s feelings about his Detective’s death, about watching the Academy come down on top of Mom— why does it hurt? It shouldn’t hurt. He doesn’t want Diego worrying about him. 

Shit. Diego’s actually crying now. 

Tentative he reaches out a hand, places it on the other’s shoulder, trying to be comforting. Diego gasps out a sob, and then grabs at him, pulls him into the other’s arms, buries his face, his wet, tear streaked face, against his neck, and before he can panic and throw the other off him he hears ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry Klaus. I’m sorry I failed you—’ and maybe it is a little about him after all. 

For a moment he’s torn. Part of him wants to push Diego away, can’t stand his weight, his warmth, the scent of him, the pain of all the years that have gone between them, but the other part— and it’s the other part that wins. He curls his own skinny little arms around his brother and pulls him in close, murmuring soothing nonsense, running a hand over the other’s hair, doing his best to be comforting as Diego cries out what feels like days, weeks, months, _years_ of distress, ‘ _I’m sorry,_ ’ babbled every now and then against his throat. He gets the feeling this moment has been building in his brother for a very long time, it’s just a coincidence that his are the arms Diego eventually collapsed into. 

It’s a strange embrace, Diego bent forward, not really standing straight, pawing at him almost, but in the least sexual way anyone has ever pawed at him, more like the other is trying to reassure himself on some level that he’s still there— and there’s the crying, the ‘I’m sorrys,’ the feel of the other’s wet face, sobbing mouth, against his neck— and the way he’s holding the other to him, one hand clenched over Diego’s shoulder, the other petting at the back of his neck— all in all there’s some uncomfortable parallels there, but it doesn’t feel like what he can dissect it into.

It gets uncomfortable pretty quickly. He’s pretty sure he’s taking at least half of Diego’s weight, and even as kids the other has quite a few pounds of muscle on him. He looks around a little helplessly, trying to work out what to do, and sees Jacques, black eyes fixed on the two of them in a way that makes his arms tighten protectively around Diego. He makes eye-contact with the ghost, hoping he’s conveying exactly how upset he’ll be if anything happens to Diego because of this— not that his feelings on the matter are likely to make much difference— wow, his heart is beating so fast. His skin prickles with cold sweat. 

If the ghost uses his powers to hurt one of his siblings— 

He breaks the eye contact, shuddering. He can’t think about it right now, he can’t—

Carefully he walks the two of them, himself and Diego, back over to the bed and awkwardly crawls onto it, Diego following, still wrapped around him, still crying, until they’re lying down in their odd and uncomfortable embrace. ‘It’s alright, I promise it is, we’ll fix it, ok?— Detective Patch will live, Mom will live, it’ll all be ok,’ he whispers against Diego’s short hair. 

Diego doesn’t reply for a very long time, before the words slip out against his throat, the other still not raising his head, ‘I haven’t forgotten. Don’t think I’ve forgotten. You have to tell me what happened, and if you tell me _nothing_ happened, you have to know I’m not going to believe you.’

He doesn’t reply for a moment, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. If he keeps his eyes open he can see Jacques, now standing over them, staring down at them with those black, black eyes. He squeezes his own shut and starts to lie, hoping its convincing enough to get Diego to let it go. ‘I went dancing, and before you suggest anything I _stole_ the money I used to buy the clothes, ok? I went dancing and there was some creep I didn’t want anything to do with, and he didn’t get the message for a bit, though I think he did get it by the end of the night— it’s just that he obviously recognised me, because he’s the one who sent the perfume. Nothing happened though. I promise you. He was just skeevy.’ He smirks ruefully where Diego can’t see it, and tells the truth, ‘I promise that since we’ve been back no living person has put their hands on me in that way, so it’s all ok. Everything’s ok.’ Ignoring David the dealer’s hands on him pushing him to his knees of course, but the man had been dead so soon after that he doesn’t count it. Anyway, that had been his choice, his offer.

‘Why did you burn them then?’ Diego asks, still not pulling back, almost actually nuzzling in closer. Maybe the other is touch starved— the way Diego lives his life that would make sense. ‘The clothes?’

Mind racing he eventually decides on, ‘I don’t know. I was still kind of high— I think it’s because the creep ruined my night and I was regretting going out, I just wished I’d stayed home— I suppose I was being melodramatic. But you know me.’

‘Hm,’ Diego mumbles against his throat, and he wishes he knew what that meant. He wishes he knew if Diego believes him. ‘Tell me about this creep.’

‘No,’ he says, shaking his head.

Diego pulls back enough to frown at him, ‘He sent you that perfume, he knows your name, he might keep pursuing you.’

Oh fuck. Lies and complications. Looks like he’s going to have to pretend to be pretending to be the sensible one. Fuck he hates being sensible. ‘I don’t think he will, but if he does I _promise you_ I will tell you immediately— the thing is that we’re thirteen right now, in body if not mind, and everyone knows who we are. What do you think dad will do if you go out and get caught trying to kill some irrelevant prick?’

‘You gotta swear to me, if he does—’

He interrupts before Diego can finish. ‘I _swear it,_ ok?’ the emptiest of empty promises.

Another moment in which Diego examines him closely, before the other eventually nods. He thinks this will be it, Diego will realise what he’s been doing, crying, cuddling, will get angry and defensive and storm out, but instead the other simply settles back beside him, pulling him in closer. He doesn’t understand it.

After a while it becomes kind of nice, especially now that Diego has stopped crying. He’s not sure when it happens, but he starts to doze, starts to—


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dog is very sick, and depending on what happens I may have to go on fic writing hiatus for a while. I have some stuff pre-written, maybe not entirely finished as I'd like it, but probably enough to post. If things do progress in that direction I'll try and post everything before I do. I would like to thank everyone for reading, for leaving comments and kudos- you have all been an excellent audience! I would also like to apologise in advance if I'm not so diligent about replying to comments as I'd like to be.

He wakes to the sound of a gun being pulled from a holster. It’s not necessarily the kind of sound everyone could recognise, but recognise it he does. There’s a figure, a man he thinks, in his room, standing over him, the shape of a gun in his hand outlined in the light coming in from the street— 

He drags Diego off the bed a second before the figure squeezes the trigger, his brother grunting as they hit the floor. He sees Jacques’ knife glint in the dark, sees the ghost come up behind the gunman as he re-aims, ready to squeeze again, sees the movement before that finger can do more than twitch, feels the rain of warm red come down on him and Diego. 

‘What’s going—?’ Diego looks around wildly as the figure slumps before them. For a second his brother is distracted, but then a movement at the door, another figure creeping into the room, gun in hand.

‘Intruders!’ he bellows at the top of his lungs just as his brother finally pulls it together enough to grab for the knife he must have dropped earlier and fling it at the person, hitting them in the chest before they can shoot. ‘INTRUDERS!’ he shouts again. ‘WAKE THE FUCK UP, WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!’

That must do it, because the sound of siblings rousing is quickly followed by the sound of siblings committing violence. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Diego asks, as they get to their feet.

‘I have no fucking clue,’ he replies, eyes flicking from the first intruder’s corpse to Jacques, knife in both hands, a hungry look on the ghost’s face. Hopefully Diego will just think he flung a knife at the first dead guy in his sleep, otherwise there might be questions— ‘I woke up and that guy was in the room.’ From what he can see in the dark the guy in question is wearing something very similar to the uniform of those assholes with guns that came after them at the bowling alley and then later, at the Theatre. ‘I think it’s those guys Five used to work for.’

‘Why the fuck are they here, now?’ Diego snaps, eyes and then a moment later a couple of knives flicking towards the door. A grunt, a figure in the same uniform slumps into the room.

‘What makes you think I know?’ Ok. Ok. What to do? He can feel memories ticking away at the back of his mind, threatening to pull him in— now is not the time. He needs to focus, He needs the strange calm of combat— he skitters down beside the nearest fallen figure and pats him down, coming up with a pistol, and then scooping his assault rifle, slinging the strap around his shoulder. ‘We should find Five and ask him.’

Moments later the door is flung wide open, spilling the light of the hallway into the room. Both he and Diego automatically aim at the figure revealed in the doorway, before sighing, relaxing. It’s Luther. The blond’s eyes flick from one to the other, then over the fallen enemies illuminated by the hallway’s light. ‘You’re ok.’ it’s a statement more than a question.

‘Oh, fine and dandy,’ he replies. ‘What about the others?’

Their brother is about to reply when they all hear a sound behind him, a twitch of his head, and Luther’s spinning around, slamming another masked and uniformed grunt into the wall headfirst. ‘Fine as far as I know,’ the blond says with a grunt.

It’s then that their father’s voice rings through the halls of the building. _”The Umbrella Academy is under attack. The attackers must be subdued. While I would like at least one captured for interrogation, in all other instances lethal force is authorized.”_

They glance at each other. ‘You heard the man,’ Diego says, with a shrug. 

Since Luther is back on the scene he pretty much fades into irrelevancy in Diego’s eyes, the other, as always, preoccupied in their brotherly rivalry. He watches from behind as they jostle each other, snap at each other, argue with each other— but still fight so well by each other’s sides. His own immediate concern is Vanya— so that’s where he heads right as the gunfire breaks out, the invaders swapping out pistols and padding around on tiptoes for their assault rifles and stomping. 

He gets the impression this was supposed to be an infiltration mission, break into the Academy and gun them all down while they were asleep— which obviously didn’t work, so it’s plan B. Shoot the shit out of the place and hope they all end up dead. 

It’s probably a bit silly worrying about his sister— from what he’s worked out he thinks they’re unlikely to go after her if the Apocalypse is still their end goal, she is the Apocalypse after all, but it’s hard to rationalise with his own panic. He’s lost Jacques— can’t see the ghost anywhere, and that scares the shit out of him. Who knows what the spirit might decide to do without supervision and with a convenient excuse for any fatalities on their side. ‘Jacques!’ he whisper-shouts as he creeps down the hall to Vanya’s room. ‘Jacques!’ No answer. 

At her door he changes to ‘Vanya!’

There’s a moment, then ‘Klaus!’ coming from within.

‘You ok?’ he calls through the door, and ‘I’m coming in, ok?’

‘Ok,’ she calls back. He carefully pushes the door open and creeps in. She’s got her bedside light on, which helps him find her, curled up beside her wardrobe, violin case cradled in her arms. She looks— he hopes he’s imagining it, because she looks very pale, and there’s an intensity to the air of the room, a weight— ‘What’s going on?’ she asks as he comes over to huddle at her side, assault rifle pointed at the door.

‘I’m not sure,’ he replies. ‘But we probably shouldn’t stick around here waiting to be shot. We should try to get out of here, come back when all the shots have died down.’

She frowns at him, ‘You mean leave everyone?’ 

‘I’m sure they can handle themselves,’ he says, ducking instinctively at the sounds of shots fired in the hallway outside, ‘and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we don’t want you getting caught up in this.’

‘Because I’m not like you,’ she says, ‘I’m a burden,’ and he sees her skin get paler—

‘No!’ he snaps, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close. ‘You are _not_ a burden. We just don’t want you to get hurt, and right now you can’t defend yourself.’ 

She looks at him, assessing, before she nods and her skin starts to return to its usual tone. ‘So what do we do?’

He thinks for a moment. Well, shit. Now he’s making plans again. As stated it’s not his strong point. What kind of world has he found himself in where he’s suddenly stuck being a responsible adult? His planning is interrupted when the door is flung open. This time it’s not Luther. His assault rifle rises, aiming at the masked figure aiming back at him— and then another figure, another man it looks like, in the same uniform, comes up behind the first, a pair of combat knives in hand. 

The world becomes slow-motion, his gaze caught by the figure with the knives. His mask is missing, torn off by the look of the red wounds on his cheeks, and his eyes are very, very black. There is a look on his face— hungry. He looks hungry. A little purr of a noise, pleasure he would guess, and the man is bringing one knife around and down, into the throat of the figure in the doorway. The other hand goes out and grabs the one clutching the gun, directing the fire away from the two of them as the dying man’s fingers clench reflexively. Those dark eyes meet his. Those black eyes. _Jacques?_

And then the dark eyed figure is darting away, knives lashing out at another masked and uniformed grunt. He gasps in a breath. ‘We need to get out of here.’

Vanya doesn’t protest. They creep out into the hall, away from Jacques and the devastation he’s wreaking down the other end. The best idea he has— in fact the only idea, based on the number of people between them and the stairs, is to go back to his room and go out his window. He’s sure he can show her the way to climb down. 

The problem is that it seems that two of the enemy have also decided to head to his room, and as he peers around the door he spots them, picking over his stuff, searching the room in case he’s hidden himself somewhere. Well shit. 

He feels her small hand tug on his shoulder. He glances back to see her mouthing something at him, the words hard to decipher. His confused staring must get to her, because she leans in close and whispers ‘Maybe we should try to capture them, like dad said.’

‘Oh, I think that’s a very bad idea—’ he says, but she’s got a gun, and he doesn’t know from where, because he still has both of his, and she’s leaning past him, aiming, and squeezing the trigger. The shot hits one of the intruders in the shoulder, absorbed by their body armour. 

The two whirl around to face them, and he can faintly hear himself babbling a long collection of swear words as he brings his own gun up. He gets one, bullet shattering their mask, body slumping moments after. The other though— a pair of knives flick through the air a second later and take them down. Jacques— he glances back, no, it’s _Diego._ ‘Oh thank fuck,’ he gasps out. 

A moment later the ghost materialises behind Diego, no longer occupying the body of the intruder. Black eyes flick over the scene, and then a grimace comes across Jacques face. ‘Sorry Babydoll, I got distracted.’

‘Well you can just fuck off and get distracted again for all I care,’ he snaps, all the worry and fear the situation has awoken in him finding a momentary outlet.

He sees Diego frown, confused, getting annoyed, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? You were right behind us and then you just—’

He raises a hand to cut the other off. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

Jacques comes closer, hands outstretched, body language something between actually beseeching and mocking. ‘Oh Darling, you gotta know if you were actually in danger good old Jacques would have been there to put a stop to it.’

He glances at the other two, now watching him, wary. ‘I’m not having this conversation right now,’ he tells the ghost.

‘Who are you talking to?’ Vanya asks.

Diego answers for him. ‘A ghost. He’s talking to a ghost. You’re talking to a ghost, aren’t you? What ghost?’

‘Oh Dollface, you are so cold—’ Jacques purrs. ‘I like it.’

He sticks his middle finger up at the ghost, ‘Go haunt some other stupid fucker.’ He’s never been very good at keeping his mouth shut at the best of times, even when it would be better for him if he did, and right now he’s getting tired of being scared of the other all the time, tired of the unequal power dynamic, frightened by the way Jacques was looking at Diego earlier. 

‘You and I both know you wouldn’t like it if I did that, don’t we Babydoll?’

A clatter in the hall behind them, the sound of footsteps and then a grunt, a flash of blue light— ‘Can you two, if it is just a two, wrap it up,’ Diego interjects, ‘We’ve got more important things to worry about right now,’ and then, as a group of masked assholes appear up the end of the corridor, ‘Get behind me.’

He drags Vanya back into his bedroom, heading for the window, looking back to see Diego throw a couple of knives and just dodge a round of bullets, lunging into the room after them. ‘I know you got a way out of this room Klaus,’ their brother says, whipping another knife down the hall, the sound of it hitting flesh accompanied by a pained grunt. ‘You take her and go, alright?’

‘We’re going,’ he calls back, forcing the window open. ‘Don’t die, you hear me! I’ll be pissed if I have your stupid ass haunting me for the rest of my life.’ He helps Vanya up onto the window ledge and points to where she should put her feet. She looks up at him, afraid. ‘It’ll be ok,’ he says softly. 

‘Yeah, yeah, like I’d want that any more than you,’ is the last thing Diego says, before suddenly there’s a terrible noise and the sight of tentacles flailing in the open doorway, red splattering the walls. 

‘Ben,’ they all chorus as one. 

They wait a moment longer for the tentacles to disappear, listening out for any further footsteps— then Ben, Allison, Luther, and Five appear all at once. They all look scuffed, a little bloody, Five more than a little annoyed.

‘What the fuck was this about, Five?’ Diego demands, but that brother is not listening to them in favour of going from body to body, checking for signs of life. 

‘All dead,’ he says, and then vanishes.

‘Is everyone alright?’ Allison asks, and then, noticing Vanya half out the window, comes rushing over to nudge him out of the way and help their sister back into the room, redirecting the question just at her ‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m _fine_ ’ Vanya insists, ‘Klaus and Diego kept me safe.’

He sees both Allison and Luther give him an assessing look and almost tells both of them to fuck off. Instead he goes over to Ben, who is covered in blood and looking a little shaken. ‘You alright?’

‘Yeah,’ the other nods. ‘It just felt different—’ a quick glance at Vanya, and then ‘— than last time.’

Because Ben is alive now and the last time he used his power he was dead. He doesn’t know what to say to that, and he can’t really ask for any more details in front of Vanya, so, carefully, he reaches out and squeezes the other’s shoulder. Having Diego crying all over him seems to have softened some of the hard edges of his desire not to be touched— and, anyway, it’s different when he’s the one doing the touching. When it’s his choice. 

Ben gives him a tremulous little smile and squeezes the hand on his shoulder, before they step away from each other and turn back to the rest of the group

It’s not long after that that their father summons them to the main hall of the Academy. He catches Vanya’s arm as they all comply, gently pulling her back and taking the gun she’s still clutching. It’s one of the intruders’, a match to the one he has stuffed in the waistband of his pyjamas—safety on. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, cringing a little.

Like her his memory goes to her shooting the intruder, the way it had hit body armour and done nothing more than attract their attention. ‘You don’t need to be sorry,’ he says to her, quietly, ‘Dad letting you join in training, you actually being good at it— and him telling you so— must have made you feel so much less powerless than usual, am I right?’

She flinches at his words, nodding with self-recriminatory injured dignity.

He pulls her in, gives her a one-armed hug, the other still holding on to the gun. As gently as he can he tells her, ‘Don’t take this as me saying you’re a burden, that you’re useless, that I don’t love you, because I do love you, but you _can’t run before you can walk_. You’re only just starting out; give it a few more training sessions before you decide to go all bad-ass on us again. You scared the shit out of me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says again, against his neck. 

‘I know you are,’ he whispers back. ‘Thank fuck for Diego, hey?’

‘You too,’ she says, pulling back to elbow him gently in the ribs. ‘Don’t underestimate yourself, yeah? I never knew you were so good with guns.’

He waves the sentiment off with a shrug and a, ‘Neither did I.’

They link arms and head out, him catching Ben watching them all contemplative. When they reach their father they find Reginald Hargreeves standing in front of a neat pile of intruders, stacked up like trophies from a hunt. In his arms is a hunting rifle, on his face is a thunderous look. ‘You are all well I see,’ he says eying them, ‘Where is Number Five?’

A moment later and a flash of blue light. ‘Here.’

‘It seems you all took my advice regarding lethal force a little too much to heart. So far I have not been able to locate a single living intruder—’ he glances to Jacques, now circling their father’s victims with a look of amusement on his face. ‘But, all in all, you handled yourselves well.’ And after that faint praise their father orders them to transport all the bodies to here so he can examine them all, and then to help Mom clean up the mess before they may return to bed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: For some mentions of underage prostitution, sexual assault- both underage and not, and domestic violence.
> 
> Here we have another chapter from Diego's perspective. Thank you all for reading, and for the comments and kudos! 
> 
> The situation with my dog is stable rights now, so I am tentatively optimistic.

[Diego]

See, the thing is, he doesn’t believe Klaus. Not about the nothing happening part. There’s no way his brother would be acting like this just over some creepy kid-fucker getting a little bit too touchy-feely with him and not getting the message at first that he wasn’t interested. The only way it makes sense is if the creep never backed down. If Klaus was forced into some situation he didn’t want to be in— a weird thing to think. Ask him before the last couple of days and he wouldn’t have thought there was any situation like that, _sexual,_ that Klaus wasn’t into— but now maybe he’s reconsidering. Maybe it’s just because his brother is running around in a thirteen-year-old body— though when he thinks that he doesn’t know if he’s talking about Klaus finding something too much for him or his own weirdly overprotective instincts.

If he thinks too much about his own breakdown the embarrassment makes him feel like he might just have to go shoot himself, but if he thinks around it, not actually paying too much attention to his own actions in favour of Klaus’ he gets this double impression— on one hand there is the physical, a slender, easily breakable body, warmth, the feel of arms around him, on the other there is the surprising kindness, Klaus letting him do what he did, holding him, not making a comment or pushing him to talk— It all blends in his head with the other boy’s fear, that’s what it was, fear in the words ‘Don’t touch me,’ and the things he does suspect about Klaus’ past— not when he was a kid, he didn’t think the other started so soon, but. There are things he’s heard over the years, every now and then, on the streets— he knows Klaus has a pretty bad drug habit, knows some of what the other has done to fund it.

He just didn’t care at the time. What a fucking asshole he is. 

His opinions are going through some pretty fucking rapid-fire evolution right now. 

Even at thirty it seems wrong somehow to think the other must have been so desperate at times to sell his charms— They are some charms too, not that he’d ever admit that where anyone could hear, but Klaus can be— is it magnetic? Seductive kind of, not that he’s ever been attracted— but there’s this thing some girls have. This kind of air about them, maybe? You know, doesn’t really matter what they look like, how they’re dressed— all eyes in the room are going to end up on them. Dicks are gonna harden as a result of their mere presence— Klaus has got something like that. The guy version of that. Like, he can see how the other man could make a living using that part of himself. Shouldn’t really have to, that’s the thing. It’s different, as far as he can see, if you want it— like, if you sleep around because you’re having fun. That’s one thing. Not his thing, but a thing he can respect— but because you’ve got no other choice— that must make you feel like shit sometimes, yeah?

He feels like he’s gotta do something about it, all of it, the past, all the hurt he’s starting to see underneath Klaus’ blasé bullshit. He knows he should be focussing on Vanya— he’s got a lot of guilt there, really, but guilt doesn’t fix things and at the end of the day he doesn’t know how to fix things with her. Even talking to her about Klaus hadn’t made him feel any closer to her. Anyway, Luther and Allison and Klaus himself seem to have the whole _fixing Vanya_ thing on lockdown. So maybe he has some space to try and do something about Klaus. 

What to do though? It’s not like they can just talk it out. How do you talk about that shit? He’s never known.

So, at a loss for other options, he’s decided on trying to verify Klaus’ account of that night that led to that card. Their father’s probably going to be pissed, you know, all that stuff about them training properly and instead he’s snuck out early— well, as early as possible. Clean up took a long, long time, and by the time it was done he’d felt exhausted and strangely numb and had collapsed back into his bed and into oblivion until mid-morning. 

The problem with being in a thirteen-year-old body with no clothes other than a school uniform or a mission uniform is that, as he quickly learns, no one will take him seriously, talk to him, or let him into any of the clubs— It’s unspeakably frustrating. He does, however, discover a crime scene behind one of them. Or an old crime scene, blood dry on the cobbles. A combination of eavesdropping and pretending wide-eyed innocent alarm at the puddle of what is obviously blood that no one’s bothered to clean up nets him the story of a notorious local drug dealer found dead, throat slit, later the night in question. 

Going back to examine the puddle also tells him that someone had been in front of this guy when he’d had his throat cut. There’s on obvious blank spot in the blood splatter, a smear as if someone was scrabbling to their feet, and some bloody footprints leading back out onto the street. The footprints— they’ve got this oval shape, like the soles of Klaus’ platform slides.

Well. At this point he’s thinking some very bad things indeed. It’d help though, if he could see the police file— also this dealer’s record. But, thirteen, and a thirteen without connections— suddenly all he can think about is Eudora. He doesn’t expect it. It comes out of nowhere. The feel of her, not yet cold, not yet stiff, but very, very dead. That hole in her chest— she’d been trying to help Klaus too. Help him because those two psychos had abducted him and tortured him and none of the rest of them had even noticed. Fuck. 

He punches the wall in the alley behind the club.

Then he goes to find Five. ‘Dad’s pissed,’ is the first thing the other says to him when he comes across him in the kitchen, drinking coffee, just himself and Delores’ dress-clad torso. 

‘I don’t care,’ he replies. ‘I need a favour.’

‘Oh, we’re not supposed to leave the Academy until he’s worked out why we were attacked.’

‘Yeah, but we know why we were attacked.’

Five gives him a look. ‘You think telling him about it is a good idea?’ and then, at his grimace, ‘I thought not. So, tell me about this favour?’

‘You just said we’re not— of course you don’t care either, do you?’

A shrug. ‘Not really,’ as Five speaks he runs the fingers of one hand around the rim of his coffee cup. His knuckles are bruised— Speaking of psychos. At first it was such a surprise to see him again, and then his appearance was so distracting, but by now when he looks at the other he can barely see the thirteen-year-old body he’s wearing. You can see the man there. Not a man he’d ever want as an enemy. He holds back a shudder, the feel of the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. 

‘There was a murder a couple of nights ago behind Club Delos, I need you to teleport into the police station and get me the case file and the victim’s criminal record.’

‘Are you going to enlighten me as to why?’ Five asks with an arch of his brow.

‘Probably not,’ this feels like his mission. Anyway, he doubts Five would care. ‘Are you going to do it anyway?’

‘Hm—’ the other hums, resting his head on his hand and looking at him in that obnoxiously superior way. 

‘Come on, don’t be a prick—’ he’s saying, and then suddenly Five is gone in a flash of blue light. ‘Prick,’ he mutters again. ‘Looks like it’s just you and me huh, Delores?’ It’s kind of disturbing to think of her mostly naked bottom half still being in Five’s room. Yep. Not following that thought down the rabbit hole. 

Mom comes in while he’s waiting, smiling the moment she sees him. ‘You all seem so down lately,’ she says, ‘So I was thinking of making a chocolate cake. Would you like that?’

‘Of course, Mom,’ he replies, guilt rising like a sick ocean in his chest. ‘I like everything you cook.’

‘You’re such a sweetie,’ she says, looking at him with those wide, unknowing eyes. This is a her before he ever took a knife to her— Fuck. He’s as much a monster as their father.

‘Do you want me to lend you a hand?’ he bleats out, wanting to do something, anything, to make anything a little easier on her. 

‘No, that’s ok,’ she says, still smiling. ‘Before I get started would you like me to make you some coffee?— I know your father doesn’t approve, but Five has been enjoying it so much.’

‘Coffee sounds good Mom,’ he replies, then watches her bustle about preparing it. He’s just lifting the cup to his lips when Five reappears, immediately taking the cup from him and sipping it, pressing the files against his chest when he starts to protest. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters, and then ‘thanks Mom,’ when she comes over and pours him a new cup. 

Five shrugs. ‘I’ve got to get back to work, come on Delores,’ with that he scoops the dummy into his arms and teleports away.

‘What do you have there Diego?’ Mom asks, peering at the files.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says, hoping that it’s true. Since he doesn’t really want her standing over him while he reads them, possibly reporting what they say back to his father, he distracts her with ‘You know, chocolate cake sounds really good right now. Are you going to make the same one you made for our tenth birthday?’

‘You did all enjoy it,’ she muses. ‘I think I’ve got everything for that recipe, I’ll just go check—’

While she does he flicks open the files. More crime scene photos greet him and pictures of the dead man, throat cut from ear to ear. He skims the contents— witnesses saw the victim leaving the club with a young man— descriptions vary, but all include dark, curly hair and not a lot of clothes. Later the victim was discovered by a pair of clubbers who had decided to give the club bathrooms a break and go into the back alley for a quick fumble. 

The blood splatter analysis supports what he’d guessed. A figure, probably on their knees, in front of the victim, the victim’s throat cut from behind. The police seem to have the curly haired young man down as _witness_ and not suspect— he’s starting to get really pissed off right now.

He puts the file down in favour of the victim’s criminal record. Deceased’s name: Davis Mallory, known generally as ‘Dave’— and that had to be a headfuck for Klaus— well known drug dealer—particularly heroin, and with a string of offenses that were roughly two-thirds drug related and assault charges and one-third a combination of domestic violence offenses and sexual offenses— rape, attempted rape, and including, notably and disgustingly, multiple cases of statutory rape involving people between the ages of twelve and sixteen. None of which seem to have been taken that seriously by law enforcement in this age before Eudora Patch, being mainly street kids, underage prostitutes, and drug addicts. His main excuse seemed to be that he thought that they were older, the police’s main response that they looked and acted older— 

He punches the table. ‘Diego?’ Mom’s voice sounds worried.

‘Sorry Mom,’ he says, looking up at her, guilt and rage choking him. ‘It’s just that there’s some really horrible people in this world.’

He passes by Five’s room intending to tell him to put the files back, but the other isn’t there. He’s been writing on the walls again, Delores’ bottom half— naked aside from the red panties Klaus chose— propped up like she’s been sitting on the edge of the bed, her top half lounging against the pillows. Egh. Creepy. 

The man himself teleports into the room as he’s about to shut the door, sleeves rolled up, a light sweat dewing his forehead, dampening the cloth beneath his arms. ‘Fucking stubborn—’ Five begins, before breaking off when he sees him. ‘What do _you_ want?’

He waves the files at his brother, ‘Could you put them back?’ 

‘Fetch them, put them back,’ the other man grumbles, ‘Do I look like a courier service to you Delores?’

‘Stop bitching and just do it!’ he finds himself snapping.

There’s a pause, Five staring at him, before an uncomfortable look comes over his face, ‘Are you alright?’ Five asks with about as much joy as someone having teeth pulled without anaesthetic. 

‘Just fucking peachy,’ he mutters. He can see his brother doesn’t believe him, but he can also see that Five wants to have to talk about his feelings roughly as much as he does. With a noise of irritation Five takes the files and disappears. He looks at the walls, he looks at Delores, he takes a very deep breath. ‘Everything’s so fucked up,’ he tells his brother’s mannequin, then turns and leaves. 

He’s got a picture now, of what happened. There’s a huge fucking hole in the picture, but the picture’s there— Klaus got dressed up, Klaus went dancing, Klaus followed a drug dealer behind the club, Klaus got to his knees— the _why_ here is an issue, but he’d bet it had something to do with heroin, and anyway it’s not one of the major issues— then, while his brother was on his knees— maybe even sucking the creep’s cock— someone came up behind the creep and slit his throat. The major issues are the _who_ in this whodunnit, as well as the _why_ — not to mention who the fuck sent Klaus that perfume. Was it the killer? Does Klaus know the killer? Is Klaus afraid of them? Does Klaus actually have very good reason to fear? Was the perfume not so much a gift but a warning to keep his mouth shut? 

Fuck. 

What’s he supposed to do now? He needs to keep Klaus safe, but this feels like a massive can of worms to open— especially as, as he almost forgot, they should be focussing on Vanya. 

Fuck, indeed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: For depression and suicidal ideation, as well as abusive behaviour and the general mess of trigger warnings this fic needs.
> 
> So it's Friday night here, the end of another long week- I hope you all had a good one! Thanks, as always, for reading, commenting and leaving kudos!

The moment they’re alone, the bodies moved, himself on his knees, scrubbing up the blood, he says it. ‘You can possess people,’ it’s not a question. ‘I saw you running around in that intruder’s body.’

Jacques shrugs, leans nonchalantly against that same patch of wall that seems to be his favourite. 

‘Don’t play stupid,’ he snaps, kneeling up and using the clean side of his arm to push the hair that’s fallen in his eyes back. ‘What else can you do?’

‘You know I’m not sure I like this new you as much as I thought I did Babydoll,’ the ghost muses. ‘You’re much more pliable when you’re off your face. You don’t ask so many questions.’

‘Answer me!’ he snaps, flinging the sponge in his hand at the ghost, leaving a smear of reddish water on the wall by the window as it flies straight through the other. 

Jacques snorts, looking down at the sponge. A chill comes over him, the sense of something being drawn from within, _taken_ from him— then the ghost leans down, picks up the sponge and slinks over, dropping it back in the bucket of bloody suds. ‘How about after this we go downstairs, pour ourselves a drink?’ those black eyes fix on his face, a smirk around that well formed mouth. The chill fades, whatever connection between them severed. ‘We could finish of the Lagavulin— or, if that’s not what you feel like right now how about a decanter of Bombay Sapphire? We could have gin and tonic without the tonic.’

He stares at the bucket, the sponge floating in the grimy water. ‘You can possess people and you can manifest physically—except I don’t know if you’re using my powers or if it’s something you’re doing yourself. When you do that it doesn’t feel like it did with Ben.’

‘You are a clever little thing, Darling,’ Jacques purrs, sinking down into a squat next to him, reaching out and running a finger across his cheek. He can feel it— not fully corporeal, but a cold shiver of sensation. 

‘And you’re keeping the other ghosts away—’ he looks up and meets those black, black eyes. ‘Why now? Why not before, before we came back— What’s changed? Why are you hanging around all the time instead of only showing up when I won’t properly remember?’

‘Hmph. Very clever,’ Jacques smiles? Smirks? It’s more like a smile, but there’s something unpleasantly condescending to it. ‘If you were in your proper body good old Jacques might just have to give you a reward for being so clever.’

He shudders, leaning back, away from the ghost. ‘Are you trying to creep me out to distract me from my questions?’ 

‘That little mind of yours really has been wasted, hasn’t it,’ the ghost muses, black eyes running over his face in a way that’s making him uncomfortable. ‘Forget the Lagavulin. Forget the gin. Just be a good boy for Jacques and stop asking questions, yeah? A man’s gotta have his secrets.’

He scrambles to his feet and walks away from the other, sick of the oppressive weight of his presence. ‘Why?’ he asks. ‘What do you have to hide?’

Jacques flows back up to his feet with easy grace. ‘That’s the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do, Darling,’ the ghost keeps coming, getting closer and closer. He backs up, finding himself once more pinned against the wall, the sense of the ghost strong, the cold coming over him again. ‘A little bit of advice Babydoll,’ Jacques says, leaning down, face inches from his face, those black eyes seem to get even blacker, like they’re pulling him down, down, down into the abyss, ‘Just because I don’t want to fuck you like this, doesn’t mean I can’t _hurt_ you—’ with that the sense of something being dragged out from inside him intensifies enough to make him gasp. He feels it then, a hand on his shoulder, fingers clenching down tight, tight, bruisingly tight— ‘and, if that’s not enough of an incentive, just think of all those people you love that we’re surrounded by right now, unknowing, unable to defend themselves—’

Ah. Of course. He should have realised it. He knows this. He’s been here before— not with Jacques, but with others. So far they’ve all gotten bored of him before long, stopped lurking around— maybe Jacques will too. He just needs to wait it out, endure it, not do anything to piss the other off— He can feel an entirely different kind of chill come over him, feel his face still into blankness. Resentment swells inside of him, a dark cloud. 

Jacques blinks, a startled look metamorphising into regret. ‘Sorry Babydoll,’ the ghost whispers, petting gently at his throbbing shoulder. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have— you were just being so—No. No excuses.’

The other steps back, that violating sense of something being taken from him fading once more. The moment the other is out of his face he steps forward again, sinking to his knees and fishing the sponge out of the bucket, turning all his attention to cleaning the floor. ‘Babydoll?’ Jacques squats down beside him. ‘Babydoll?’ He ignores the ghost. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ the other snaps and he flinches before he can stop himself, a moment later feeling his body go tense, breath caught in his chest. Well, well, well. This is that moment again, that moment before further violence. Then Jacques vanishes. 

He waits for a long moment but the ghost doesn’t reappear. Neither do any other ghosts. He is suddenly, shockingly, sober and alone. It’s funny, he doesn’t know what to do with this sudden freedom. 

He goes back to scrubbing blood off the floor. 

The next morning, once all of them have woken up— surprisingly allowed to sleep in after the long night before— their father forbids them from leaving the Academy without his permission, citing this new and unexpected threat. Instead of the new, rigorous training regimen they expect they are set to working on their endurance, running in circles around the garden under Pogo’s supervision. Their father retires back to his study after some grumbling about Diego’s absence, and it’s only about fifteen minutes after that when Five vanishes as well, off to do whatever it is he does. 

Pogo looks offended, calls after “Master Five” for a moment, before sighing. He seems distracted and unhappy— but he, himself, can’t find much sympathy right now. Maybe he should try harder— but there’s too many memories in which Pogo stands behind or beside his father, does his father’s dirty work for him, and that worried and regretful expression doesn’t make up for the other’s bad deeds.

Allison has commandeered Vanya for the run, Luther jogging just ahead of the two, and he’s oddly pleased to find Ben falling into place beside him. They don’t speak. That doesn’t really matter— he realises he’s missed Ben, missed his companionship, his company, even his moments of incessant nagging. Jacques hasn’t returned. Neither have the other ghosts. There are times in his life where he has begged God or the Gods or the Universe or the Devil himself to be alone, just for a moment, just a moment’s peace— and now he hates it. Alone in his room the air had echoed strangely. 

It makes him feel oddly vulnerable. Fluttery and weak. Closer to breaking than he wants. He does not want to break. It’d be easy to break— he’s seen people before that have broken, broken properly— not just cracked a little, or a lot, but broken past the point they can put themselves back together. They never really get better. Alive or dead they might as well be the ghosts that haunt him.

It would be easier if Jacques was around. Right now he’s skidding down that fine line between terror and fury at the ghost, and that particular combination of emotions he can deal with. He knows how to be a person terrified and incandescently angry at the same time— it’s like being a kid again, like being under his father’s power— and whoops, here he is anyway. He hopes like fuck that Jacques isn’t some twisted manifestation of his Daddy Issues— as far as he knows he never did want to fuck the old man— he imagines it for a moment, those cold, dry hands running over him— he shudders. Even if he wasn’t all fucked up and not wanting to be fucked he thinks a bit of bad-touch from old Reginald would send him running off to the nunnery for life. 

Their father doesn’t show up for lunch, neither does Five, and apparently he isn’t in his room when Mom goes to check, nor is Diego in his. The thing is— he cannot understand why their father is putting up with all this. The man as he thought he knew the man would never let them get away with slacking the way they are, would never let them go wandering off when he told them not to, would never accept the lack of respect that they have shown him. Though, come to think of it, exactly what did their father use to coerce them all? He didn’t hit them, he might have berated them but he didn’t scream at them, admittedly every now and then he locked one or other of them in their rooms— or, in his and Vanya’s cases in small, dark, terrifying places— but. But. But. But. 

Maybe it really was just fear. And yeah, he is still scared of the man, but he’s not scared in the way he was at thirteen. None of them are, really— even Luther is only Luther about it out of habit, he’d guess, not enough time between realising how much his father had— how to even put it? Maybe just simply never taken him seriously. Never really respected him— whatever the best way to say it is, it’s probably just that Luther is now back in a world in which their father is walking around and issuing orders before he really got a proper chance to get used to thinking for himself in the world without Reginald Hargreeves. 

Not that Luther’s choices in those few moments seem all that much sounder than his own— hell, even the motives were similar. They both wanted to forget— but Luther is naïve enough to believe that the drink and the drugs and the fucking is enough to make up for everything you don’t have. That the fun is just fun. He can’t see all the undercurrents. The way you can use having a good time to hurt yourself. Now he’s depressing himself. What happened to good old Klaus? Always up for some fun or a fuck?

Well, he’s thirteen for one, and for another— maybe it’s just time to pay his dues. All his pigeons have come in to roost. The piper is waiting, hand out— etc. You really can only run for so long. No matter what you’re running from.

Be it in body or mind. Both are now exhausted— he lets himself slow, eventually stopping. He knows he needs to cool down or his body will start cramping on him— like his mind, he supposes. Fuck. He’s really falling into a dark mood now. The quiet kind, The slow kind. Not the kind that makes him crawling out of his skin and wanting to get hurt. Next thing it’ll be crawling into bed and not coming out for days— better always with some heroin or oxy or any kind of opioid. He never could get too sober or the ghosts would drive him into the more actively self-destructive of his moods. 

‘You ok?’ Ben asks, coming to a stop beside him. ‘Are you—’ a pause. He’s noticed that Ben’s more hesitant now that he’s no longer dead, now that there’s an audience larger than one to hear what he has to say. ‘Do you want to do something later, just us?’ Ben asks, ‘I get the impression you need distracting.’

He tries to brush him off with ‘I might just have a nap, if that’s ok? I haven’t been sleeping well.’

It doesn’t work, Ben counters with, ‘Then how about after you wake up?’

‘I guess,’ he replies, intending to do his best to avoid any such thing. 

‘Well that makes me feel wanted,’ Ben snarks. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t been hanging out as much, but I do want to spend some time with you, so don’t be a bitch about it, ok?’

‘Fuck off,’ he replies, good natured, but is saved from having to come up with some way to get out of spending time with the other— it’s funny, now he wants so very badly to be alone, utterly alone, while earlier he hated it. Unstable. That’s another thing he’s always been accused of— by Luther coming up behind them and then berating them for just standing there instead of cooling down. It seems a well-meaning beratement with their best interests at heart, but he still wants to tell the blond to go fuck himself.

After a lunch he can’t bring himself to eat their father still hasn’t emerged, Five still hasn’t returned, and Diego is still missing. He finds himself lingering at the table, all his attempts to convince himself he wants to get up, go do something, even crawl all the way to his room and into bed like he’d planned fail him. He feels like the withered corpse of his soul has been sucked out. It’s all too much. 

A little cocaine and he’d be ok to party, a little heroin and it’d ease him to sleep, enough to drink and he could start a fight, a lot of sobriety and there’s only the depression. Black dog biting at his heels. It’s always the times between things, when nothing’s happening, when there’s no pressing need to keep going that his mind starts to eat itself. The warmth of Dave at his back, the man’s arms around his waist, that lovely head resting between his shoulders— the last time he’d gotten a little blue, a week or so stuck in town, no action to be seen, Dave had curled around him and kept him safe while he’d pulled himself together. 

‘Klaus!’ he looks up. Vanya is standing beside his chair, looking worried. At her shoulder is Ben. Behind them a little are Allison and Luther. She must have been calling his name for a while now. 

‘Huh?’ he tries a smile, doesn’t think it really works from the way she flinches back. 

‘Ok, that’s it,’ she says, reaching down and pulling at him until he gets out of his chair. ‘We’re going to go out and do something.’

‘But dad said we aren’t allowed to leave the Academy,’ Luther protests, with Allison’s agreement.

Vanya huffs out a breath, annoyed. ‘Then we’ll _all_ go out and do something. Surely they’re not going to attack us if we’re all together in a public and _very crowded_ place.’

‘Oh, no. No, it’s ok,’ he protests, hating how weak his voice sounds. ‘I’m sure dad’s right in this case— anyway. Everything’s fine. I might just go have a lie down.’

‘No,’ she tells him. ‘Everything’s not fine. It’s obvious everything’s not fine. I’m not going to make you talk about it if you don’t want to, but the least I can do is to try and distract you from it, ok?’

‘That’s really very nice of you,’ he says, meaning it, smiling a smile that he thinks comes out more sincere— ‘but it’s really not going to work I’m afraid. Sometimes you just need time to get out of the mood you’re in.’

‘Let me try,’ she says, leaning in close to him. She looks worried. She looks like she loves him and he’s worrying her— an odd thought. ‘Please, just let me try.’

‘Ok then, but I do think dad is right. It’s probably not safe—’ 

‘Then we won’t go out, how about that?’ she suggests. ‘Why don’t we go up on the roof and watch the people down below? That way the others don’t have to hang around if they don’t want to. We can get Mom to make us something to eat—’

‘I guess so?’ he says with a shrug.

‘Ok, it’s decided,’ she loops her arm through his to encourage him to come along. He sees Luther and Allison glance at each other, before a little shrug passes between them. 

‘We’ll see you both later, ok?’ Allison says, looking at Vanya a little beseechingly. He knows she wants to spend more time with their sister, just as he knows Vanya isn’t always being cooperative, but he’s got no idea why she and Luther have decided not to try and pursue the issue right now and are letting them wander off alone together again. In truth he has no idea what either of them are thinking. 

‘Ok,’ Vanya acknowledges. 

‘I’m coming with,’ Ben says, startling him.

‘Oh,’ Vanya murmurs. 

Ben shrugs, ‘It feels like too long since I’ve spent time with the two of you.’

On the roof looking down the people below look small, doll-like. He finds he doesn’t have much to say at first, just listens to Vanya and Ben chatting, commenting on the people below, telling stories about what they’re doing, where they’re going, their secret lives. The two of them together are startlingly amusingly sarcastic— he shouldn’t be startled realistically, he knows Ben, and he’s getting to know Vanya enough that he should have guessed what they’d be like together. It’s a pity that Ben didn’t live, maybe if he had they eventually would have realised this about each other, ganged up on the rest of them. Maybe he could have even joined in.

He closes his eyes against the cool, gentle breeze, letting it wash over him. He feels so fucking empty. Heavy. Leaden. For the merest moment he imagines throwing himself off the roof— but how could he do that to the two of them?

He’s not sure how it happens, but a moment later he’s leaning against Vanya, her arm around him, as the other two continue to talk. Eventually he opens his eyes again, looks down at the world they’re standing above— he feels a warmth at the small of his back. Ben’s hand, the heat soaking in, grounding him.

He shoots a smile his brother’s way, meets dark, worried eyes, wishes he could tell the other that he’s ok in a way Ben will believe, but Ben’s seen far too much of his stupid shit to be easily fooled. Sober and in the mood he’s in right now it makes him cringe. 

It takes a while before he feels like joining in, certainly it’s after Mom arrives on the roof with thick slices of chocolate cake still warm from the oven and the words ‘I know it’s not quite the done thing to serve it before it cools, but I do remember the time that you stole that whole cake from the cooling rack Klaus, and how much you all seemed to enjoy it.’

She has also made lemonade. They sit with their backs against the wall and eat, all huddled together— this is the cake from their tenth birthday. It’s just as delicious as he remembers— before going back to people watching. This time he manages to make a comment or two, here and there, making up the wildest, most deranged— yet still thirteen-year-old Vanya friendly— stories he can manage for what the fashionable young black woman walking the little champagne poodle is doing, what that handsome middle aged Asian man strolling along drinking coffee is thinking, what that bleached blonde teenager having a tantrum at her boyfriend is actually saying. 

All in all it’s a good afternoon. They come down off the roof and go their separate ways, Vanya to fetch her violin to practice— him intending to join her after he’s been to the bathroom, after he’s splashed some cold water on his face, after he’s sat down in his room for a moment— well, he is intending to join her, he just hopes he manages it. He sets out to do what he’s set out to do, Ben hesitating for a moment, before scurrying to his side. ‘I know something’s wrong,’ his brother says. ‘I just don’t know what it is. Please, can you just tell me? I know I’ve been neglecting you—’

‘It’s ok,’ he reassures the other. ‘It must be so freeing being able to talk to people. I get it. I do.’

‘You’re being very understanding,’ his brother muses, ‘and that just makes me worry more. Get angry, sulk, have a tantrum, say something monumentally bitchy— please don’t be like this. It makes me feel like we’re strangers.’

He shrugs. ‘Maybe this is the way I am if I’m sober.’

‘Maybe,’ Ben catches his arm, bringing them both to a stop, ‘but somehow I don’t think that’s all this is. You can talk to me, you know?’

Except he doesn’t feel like he can. The time they’ve been separate, Ben no longer his eternal shadow, feels like it’s put a wall up between them. It’s like he can see the other, but he can’t reach out, can’t touch— ‘It’s all just been a bit much,’ he says eventually, shrugging a little helplessly. ‘I’ll be ok though, I always am—’ and now he might as well be echoing Jacques. Great.

Ben examines him for a moment, and then shakes his head. ‘I know you Klaus. Don’t forget that. I’m afraid you’re going to do something stupid—’ 

He interrupts, ‘I’m not going to—'

But Ben interrupts him right back. ‘ _And!_ If you get in that kind of mood I want you to promise to come to me _immediately._ We don’t have to talk about it, I won’t tell the others, we don’t have to do anything more than just sit around in my room in the dark if that’s what you want, but I don’t want you running around sober and self-destructive. I don’t think it’ll end well.’

In the end he promises, not because he intends to keep that promise— if he did he’d be telling Ben already— but because it gets the other off his back. They agree to meet up later, after Vanya’s finished her practising— Ben, like the others, not too keep to be around her when she’s got her violin in hand— and then go their separate ways. 

He finds Diego in his room again.

‘What do you want now?’ he sighs as he shuts the door behind himself, feeling beyond exhausted.

‘I want you to tell me about Davis Mallory,’ is what Diego says.

He frowns ‘Who?’ 

‘ _DDD-Davis Mallory,_ aka just plain Dave,’ _Davis?_. Oh, he wasn’t a David after all. All the heavy leaden weight of earlier fades and he starts to feel like he’s floating, buoyed up, up, up, until he’s almost, but not quite, fully going away. Diego has found this out too. Diego has come to confront him. This really is probably going to end badly. His brother is still talking ‘—a drugdealer found dead behind Club Delos a couple of nights ago—notably the night before the morning you were seen burning those clothes. The man’s a creep, I got Five to fetch his criminal record for me. He’s hurt a lot of people. A lot of kids—’ Diego trails off, then takes a very deep breath, lets all of it out, tongue flicking nervously between his lips. He watches, waits, feels the weight of the sword of Damocles about to fall upon him. ‘— a kid matching your description was seen with him just before he died. A kid matching your description— there’s evidence someone was on their knees for him when his throat was cut—’ there is a grunt of noise somewhere deep in Diego’s throat, then he sees his brother’s mouth move, trying to get words past the constriction in his mind. Eventually Diego manages, ‘Wwww-what happened Klaus? Did— Did he hurt you? A— aaaand who was it, who killed him?’

‘What makes you so sure I was there?’ he asks, feeling like he’s somewhere very far away from this conversation. On reflection it’s probably not the right question. He should have just denied it outright. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he tries adding, even though it’s all too late.

‘What makes me so—’ Diego shakes his head, the moment rough, a little spasmodic, then the man is coming closer, but not so aggressive as last time. ‘It all adds up, the timeline, your behaviour, burning the clothes— you can talk to me. I’m not going to give you shit about this. I just need to know if you’re in danger—'

‘We’re all in danger, all the time,’ he points out, still feeling like he’s floating away. ‘The moment we all decided to try and stop the apocalypse— no, maybe it was before that. The moment we were born the way we are—’

‘Be serious,’ Diego demands, reaching out and grabbing his upper arms. The other is gentle, but that doesn’t change the fact that all of a sudden he’s trapped. It’s not like last time, Diego holding him, crying. The way he feels, the way Diego is acting— he’s a lot more powerless right now. ‘You gotta tell me what happened.’

He pulls back, feels Diego cling for a moment before he manages to get the other to detach. ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘No I don’t. Why do I have to tell you anything?’

‘WWWW-Why—?’ Diego manages to get out. ‘I’m worried for you. I want to help you—’

There’s a sudden burst of rage, unexpected. ‘Why the fuck do you care now? You never did before. None of you ever did before.’

‘I know,’ Diego almost bleats, reaching for him again. He dodges his brother, slapping at his hands when they get too close. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry— I think we fucked up with more than Vanya. I think we fucked up with you too— I want to fix it. I want to fix _you._ ’

‘Fuck off Diego!’ he snaps, feeling his lips curl up, bare his teeth. ‘It’s not up to you to _fix_ me,’ and all of a sudden he finds himself thinking how patronizing the whole thing is. Would Vanya feel the same if she knew what they were up to? Except, of course, Vanya’s issues were mainly them, his are— well, his father, the ghosts, the other things. His problems have a wider array of causes. Still, he is himself, a fully grown man— even if he’s wearing a child’s body— and he does not need to be told that someone else is going to _fix_ him as if he has no choice in the matter. He is so fucking sick of people taking away his right to choose. ‘Get the fuck out of my room!’

‘No. Klaus. Just—’ Diego mutters, still trying to grab him, to hold him still.

‘FUCK OFF!’ he shouts, and when that doesn’t stop his brother he backs towards the window. He needs out of here. He isn’t doing this right now. 

‘Please, could you just—’ the other says, and it turns into something like a waltz, him always doing his best to stay out of reach, until they’ve spun around and Diego is by the window. ‘Please Klaus. Just talk to me—’

And then he’s out of the room, fleeing down the hallway away from Diego, and the other is chasing him, but he’s just fucking done with this. He just wants to be left alone. Or if not alone, then to be able to be with people without them wanting something from him. Is that too much to ask? ‘Klaus!’ he hears Diego shout behind him, ‘Klaus, would you just—’ and then there’s the sound of other siblings, attracted to the commotion, descending into questions and demands. He weaves his way through them before anyone can stop him, jogging by the time he hits the stairs, running the moment he’s out the front door. Running. Running. Running away. 

_What is he running from?_

The question tears at him, even though he tries to ignore it. _What?_ _**What?**_ Eventually it gets to be too much for him. He ducks into an alleyway and makes himself face it. 

What is he running from? Why doesn’t he want to talk about what’s been happening to him? What’s already happened to him? _What is he running from?_

Simple. He’s running from the fact that it’s his fault, even though he’s already admitted it to himself. He just doesn’t want to— doesn’t think he can _bear_ to hear it from the others. Any of them. Diego. Ben. Vanya. Luther. Allison. Five— If they say those words, anything like those words— right now he doesn’t think he’ll survive it. They’ll kill him, one hit KO. 

Suddenly he’s laughing, because it’s almost funny, isn’t it? Every one of them has said something over the years, one thing or another, they’ve all already blamed him for so much— why is he so scared? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. His hand rises to Dave’s dog tags around his neck—

He wishes the other was here. Arms around him. He hasn’t tried to conjure Dave since he’s been stuck as thirteen again— what would the other think? This little kid claiming to be his lover—

‘Duck!’ he does so before thought registers, huddling behind a dumpster moments before a bullet slams into the wall where his head just was. The ghost leans in close, a woman in her twenties, clothes and makeup and hair screaming classic eighties punk, a hole from temple to temple, entrance and exit wound, blood and gore still pasted across her face and down her neck and chest. ‘He’s coming to get you,’ she says, one hand going up to play with the edge of the bullet wound, smearing gore over old gore, ‘He’s gonna get you like he got me.’

‘What the fuck?’ he bleats at her, as another bullet lodges in the dumpster. 

‘Time runs out for all of us,’ she says, fingers trailing red down her cheek. ‘It’s running out for you— oh fuck, your monster is strong isn’t he? I can’t stay any longer—’ she disappears.

‘What? Jacques, is it Jacques?’ he calls after her, but no reply. Has Jacques turned on him?

It’s not Jacques. When he risks peering around the dumpster he sees that it’s a tall man in a good suit, handsome in an arrogant kind of way, blond but with looks not like any of the blonds in his life. He doesn’t look like Luther, he doesn’t look like Dave, he doesn’t even look like Daniel Craig as James Bond, but that’s the way he carries himself.

The blond is very, very, very obviously coming for him, stalking him down like the terminator—

‘Well fuck,’ he finds himself saying. It’s funny, all day he’s been skating down the edge of the abyss, one wrong thought all it’d take to have him throwing himself into traffic, but right now what he wants is to live. It’s a contrary kind of thought. He wants his life to be his own, his own to live and his own to dispose of, not a thing for this man to just take from him—

He reaches into the dumpster and grabs the first hard thing he feels, the neck of a beer bottle, then hurls it at the approaching blond. The man raises an arm to block the oncoming projectile. He uses the momentary distraction to hare off down the alley, flinching from the sound of bullets nearly hitting him. 

This prick must be a particularly shitty shot or the Gods are on his side again. He bursts out onto the street, heads for the crowd, trying to lose himself amongst the bodies— surely not even the assholes Five worked for will attack him out in the open, gun him down in a crowd. That has to be who this is. That’s right, isn’t it? Though why are they after him?— won’t that cause panic and alarm? 

He needs to get back to the Academy. He needs a weapon. He needs— he’s caught. A hand on his arm, his body being whirled around, flung hard against the wall of a different alley. The breath leaves his lungs. He scrabbles at the bricks while feeling like he’s collapsing down them. _Bam_ the last of the breath leaves his lungs. Fire burns across his ribs. He gasps, a fish landed, winded by the punch. Things don’t feel right. Was that a rib he felt snap?

Through hazy, teary eyes, he looks up. It’s the blond prick. How did he get ahead of him? 

The gun raises again, the end of the barrel bumping gently against his temple. Breathless, falling into the haze, he does the only thing he can think of. Bringing his knee up as savagely as he can manage, slamming it into the man’s groin. He collapses as the man hunches forward, lungs still not working properly, the tiniest of tiny breaths, second’s deep and only reaching the top of his lungs, all he can pull in.

He has to get up. He has to keep going. _Bam. Bam. Bam._ He feels the kicks land in his side, same side, definitely feels something snap that time. The darkness is coming for him, too long without enough air—

As the blackness swallows his vision he hears a strangled sound of pain, the sound of the gun firing again, again, again, the words bellowed, ‘ _I’m going to cut your fucking cock off!_ ’

‘Jacques,’ he mouths, no sound coming out.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's a chapter from Number Five's perspective. I think I should TRIGGER WARNING: for violence and also a historical non-desired and rather forceful attempt by one character to hit on another. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and leaving comments and kudos! I hope you're having a lovely weekend!

[Five]

‘—terminate Klaus Hargreeves,’ the leader of the infiltration team gasps out between bloody teeth. Idly he contemplates how long it’s taken for the man to break, a man from Headquarters sent to lead a local team, and obviously well trained— most of his mind, though, is occupied with the immediate need to get back to the Academy.

He imagines it, his room, Delores waiting, and flexes the part of self that houses his power, stepping into the room while he’s still shaking the pain flaring up his arm from his well and truly bruised knuckles. He can hear shouting in the hall. _Where’s Klaus?_

‘Where’s Klaus?!’ he bellows as he storms out into a confusion of siblings asking questions and arguing with Diego.

Their reply is shouted over each other, confused, contrary. Diego has done something to Klaus. Diego is trying to help Klaus. Diego and Klaus had a fight etc. etc. 

‘Shut the fuck up!’ he snaps at all of them, and then, ‘not you Vanya—’ putting up a soothing hand when he sees her flinch back. ‘Sorry. The rest of you chuckleheads tell me where Klaus is right now!’

‘Why?’ Luther asks, squinting at him in confusion. 

‘Oh for—’ he glances at Vanya. It’s not like he can say his former employers are after their brother in front of her— ‘He’s the target,’ he snaps. ‘Not all of us, just him, so if you could all stop with the tantrums and—’

‘He ran off,’ that’s Diego, the other man pushing through the huddle of Hargreeves and stalking towards the stairs, soon breaking into a run. ‘Fuck. Fuck!’

Fuck indeed. ‘Stay with Vanya,’ he orders, pointing to Allison, and then, a moment later Ben. The two of them should be enough to keep her safe if he’s wrong. 

‘No fucking way!’ Ben snarls, ‘I know him better than any of you. You might need me.’

‘Then you two stay with Vanya,’ he snaps, pointing at Luther and Allison, and then when Luther immediately starts protesting, ‘Allison, will you at least stay with Vanya?! We are wasting time—’ he half expects both Vanya and Allison to start protesting, but Allison just nods and Vanya mutters something about being able to walk before she runs and he doesn’t have time for this, so, leaving their sisters behind, all of them chase after Diego. 

‘You will all return to your rooms at once!’ he hears their father’s voice boom over the PA system, but they all ignore the man, even Luther— admittedly that’s because Number One is doing his best to interrogate him at to what’s going on.

‘Later!’ he snaps at the blond. ‘Once we’ve secured Klaus.’

He should have just teleported away, not bothered trying to reason with the unreasonable, but he has no idea where Klaus is. Hopefully Ben will actually be useful. 

They catch up to Diego pretty quickly, their brother out on the street in front of the Academy looking wildly around, trying to spot Klaus. ‘What the fuck happened, Diego?’ Luther starts in immediately, grabbing Diego’s arm. ‘What did you do to make him run off like that?’

‘Now is not the time,’ Diego replies, pulling away from him roughly, ‘We gotta find Klaus.’

‘If he even wants to be found—’ Luther snaps, before being interrupted by Diego.

‘What do you know about what he wants? Have you paid _any_ attention to him at all since we’ve been back? No. You’ve got no idea what’s going on with him.’

‘And you do?’ Luther scoffs— and that’s it, he’s just about had it with them all, but it’s Ben that speaks up.

‘Stop it! You’re all so fucking selfish!’

With that Ben stalks away from them, Luther calling out ‘Where are you going? Do you know where he is?’

Ben calls back, ‘No I don’t, but I thought I might try actually looking for him instead of standing around arguing.’

The problem is that there’s no indication of where he went. Everywhere they look they can see people, but none of them are the lanky, curly haired figure they’re looking for. ‘Split up,’ he orders, since obviously someone is going to have to be the grown-up around here, pointing each in the direction they should go, ‘But stay on your guard.’

They split up, him using his powers to teleport ahead by short distances, stopping between each one to try and spot the missing Hargreeves, to call out his name. He didn’t expect this. He must admit he didn’t expect this. If Klaus ends up dead because he failed to take into account the way he and Vanya are bonding, and the effect that might have on the timeline— well, he’s going to be very angry, and some of that anger will definitely be self-directed. It’s weird to think of Klaus as being important— honestly he spends most of their interactions assuming the other is completely irrelevant. Maybe, after their recent— he wouldn’t so far as to call it a fight, but his confronting Klaus about Delores— whatever it was he’s maybe mentally re-filed the other as being a better person than he’d assumed— not that being a good person or a bad person really means shit to him— but that’s all. 

When they’ve gotten Klaus back home safe and sound he’ll go back to the abandoned warehouse where he’s stashed the infiltration team leader. He probably doesn’t have any more information, but it can’t hurt to try and extract a bit more— well, it can, his hand is proof of that, but a saying’s a saying. Anyway, he still needs to kill the asshole. Said asshole better hope Klaus is still alive and well at the time, or he might not feel the necessity to be nice about it either— and here’s him lecturing Diego not that long ago about vengeance— it’s different though. Killing Detective Patch’s killers wasn’t going to bring her back, wasn’t going to do anything but make living with himself a little bit harder for his brother— he’s got no such qualms about the blood on his own hands. 

He can’t see Klaus. Fuck. Someone should stick a tracking implant in _him_ instead, he’d already started to go missing from the Academy now and then when they were thirteen— much to their father’s annoyance— and he takes it Klaus’ habits didn’t improve any in the years he was gone. 

He starts backtracking, wondering if the others have had any better luck, when the sound of a commotion greets his ears. Screams and shouting and loud commentary. He looks around, locating the origin of the noise— somewhere in the direction he’d sent Luther— and teleports over, stepping into the crowd that’s forming.

‘Let him go!’ he hears bellowed, Luther’s voice. 

‘Klaus!’ he hears Ben shout, ‘Klaus!’ and then, ‘Oh God, is he even still alive? He’s not moving.’

‘Is _he_ even still alive?!’ that’s Diego, he must be the last to arrive. 

He pushes through and takes stock. There’s a man cradling the still form of Klaus in his arms, their brothers standing in front of him, blocking his way. He blinks. He steps closer, coming to stop beside Luther. He blinks again. 

He’s never seen a man looking like that still walking before. People who have been stabbed that much and that thoroughly generally aren’t capable of much, maybe existing on life support, but mainly they’re dead. Ah. Also people who have had their throats cut from ear-to-ear— wait. _Wait._

‘Christopher?’ he frowns. The eyes are black where they should be blue, and with a face with features so ragged and swollen from the thrust of a knife it’s hard to tell, but the suit, the hair—

‘Who the fuck’s Christopher?’ Ben asks.

‘Third, or forth— depending whether you rank Hazel and Cha Cha as one entity or two— best assassin employed by the Commission,’ he replies, then reconsiders ‘ _best_ now, I suppose, with me retired and the other two probably dead in the apocalypse.’

If it is Christopher the man is behaving very strangely, and not just because he’s up and walking when he should very obviously be down and dying, but there’s the way he’s cradling Klaus, so gentle, and the murmured litany, barely audible, that he’s muttering to their —hopefully just— unconscious brother. A lot of it seems to be _”I’m sorry,”_ the rest of it full of self-recrimination, though as he watches the theme changes to reassurance for a moment, the words ‘You’ll be ok. I promise you’ll be ok. I’m so sorry Babydoll,’ slipping out.

He hears Diego gasp, then the words, ‘You put him down right the fuck now or I’ll—’

‘You’ll what?’ Christopher asks, finally actually paying attention to them. Except that’s not Christopher’s voice, it’s his tone, his timbre, but the way the words are formed— there’s a slight accent there, but nothing he recognises, and it’s all spoken in the lower part of the blond’s register. Deep, more than a bit sinister. ‘Why don’t you four get out of my way so I can get him back where that robot bitch can fix him?’

_Robot—_

‘Don’t you fucking dare talk about mom like that!’ Diego roars, pointing a knife at the man holding Klaus, and looking even more highly strung than usual, twitching a bit around the eyes. ‘Don’t you fucking talk about her, and don’t you fucking dare keep touching him. PUT HIM DOWN!’

‘Very convincing mama’s boy,’ Christopher almost purrs, head tilting back arrogantly, a grin revealing sliced up lips and bloody and missing teeth, ‘I’m really fucking scared.’

‘I have no idea what’s going on here,’ he says, realising it’s true. It’s an odd thought. His eyes flick over the crowd, watching, gossiping, flinching from the mess that Christopher has become, he glances at his brothers, their aggression and posturing, Diego’s incandescent fury, he glances at Christopher— but he’s not sure that is Christopher. Oh, it’s Christopher’s body, he’s sure of that, but as to what’s in the driver’s seat— ‘Ok, enough’ he says, voice authoritative, someone’s got to take control of this situation. He steps forward and addresses Christopher, gesturing to Klaus, ‘Is he alive?’

‘For now,’ the man replies, assessing him. The answer sets the others off, Luther and Diego and even Ben starting to shout. 

‘He’s hurt though?’ he asks, nodding when Christopher nods. ‘How badly?’

‘Broken ribs, probably some internal injuries, the bastard was kicking him when I got there,’ is the reply. 

Ok. Ok. ‘What bastard?’

‘ _This_ bastard,’ the man replies, raising his shoulders and widening his eyes and looking at him as if the words make sense. ‘Now, I’ve answered your fucking stupid questions kiddie, let me get him home.’

It’s actually probably all they can do right now. He imagines trying to fight this man— already injured to this degree and still standing, Klaus in his arms— ‘Alright,’ he says with a nod. ‘But you hurt him—’ 

The warning is interrupted by the man’s laughter. It’s gruesome, froths of blood and fluid gathering around the wreckage of his mouth. ‘What, like all of you have?’ With that he starts walking, Klaus still cradled so gently in his arms. 

Diego lurches to stop him, but he catches his brother, then Luther when the man does the same— ‘Can you see any way we can get Klaus away from him without Klaus getting hurt worse?’ he snaps when they start shouting at him. ‘No? Speak up if you have any ideas, because I sure as shit don’t.’

‘So you’re just going to let him what? Carry Klaus home? He’s obviously one of the bad guys—’ that’s Luther of course, the world still only black and white.

‘Which is something we can deal with when Klaus is back at the Academy and getting some urgently needed _medical attention,_ ’ he hisses.

‘I can deal with him the moment Klaus is safe,’ Ben says, brushing past the three of them, ‘So I agree with Five.’

Unhappy, the other two eventually surrender, all of them following along the figure with Klaus cradled in his arms, once more mumbling nonsense at their brother. A lot of _I’m sorrys_ included.

The more he watches the bloodied blond the more he is convinced the body is Christopher but the mind is not. Christopher was always— good posture, expensive clothes, an air of affected sophistication that was never all that convincing. They’d run into each other a few times at Headquarters, but the one time they’d really actually interacted suddenly comes to mind, making his face scrunch up in remembered embarrassment.

It had been Reno, mid seventies. Him on one assignment, Christopher on another, coincidence the only thing that brought them together. They’d ended up in the same bar, or should he say Christopher had followed him to the bar after recognising him, and the other had ordered them both martinis— shaken, not stirred, because Christopher always liked to imagine himself as James Bond.

It’d been in the lull time just after the kill, but before he’d had to get back, so he’d let the man buy him drinks while thinking of Delores back in his hotel room. After a few martinis Christopher had started hitting on the bartender— a pretty girl with a lot of blonde hair— getting more and more obnoxious as the night wore on. 

He’d eventually had enough, gone to the bathroom after he decided he needed a piss before going back to Delores, leaving the blond pain in the ass to hopefully get thrown out on the street before night’s end, only Christopher had followed him. What happened next still makes him cringe.

The bathroom had been empty, Christopher had suddenly turned amorous, and the next thing he knew he had the blond’s hands pawing at his flies, the man babbling about what a legend he is, how the blond had always admired him, and then a bunch of filth, some of which he remembers as _”I want to choke on your cock”_ , and _”raw me, daddy,”_ and _”wreck my ass.”_

For a man who had been in a loving and committed relationship with the one shop mannequin since his early teens it had all been a bit of a shock. He doesn’t remember what he said, just that he’d pushed Christopher away and teleported out of there, ending up spending several hours walking the streets trying to get his head clear before he could return to Delores. He’d never told her what happened, but she hadn’t been impressed by his drinking and unconvinced when he told her nothing was wrong— they’d had quite the fight about it, he remembers with a smile. 

The smile fades. Yeah. This is quite clearly not Christopher’s mind running around in Christopher’s body. How that can be is beyond him. 

The thought is interrupted by a sound, almost a growl, coming deep from within Diego’s throat. He glances at the man, but the reason is not apparently obvious, he shrugs it off— until it happens again. Again and again. Every now and then. It takes him embarrassingly long to realise that it’s being prompted every time the man holding Klaus lets slip the word “Babydoll.”

For a moment he almost longs for the post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’d been simpler back then, just him and Delores, no one else around to have thoughts or feelings or opinions contrary to what he wants them to be thinking or feeling or believing— it had been lonely though. Best not even entertain the thought lest the universe take it as an excuse to lock him back there.

Their father greets them with his hunting rifle as they step through the front door of the Academy. ‘Put my son down,’ he demands, tone steely. Christopher’s face cocks a ruined brow. The man ignoring their father in favour of carrying Klaus in the direction of the medical ward— _How does he even know where it is?_ ‘I am quite serious,’ is Reginald Hargreeves’ response, finger hooking around the trigger.

‘Do it then old man,’ the not-Christopher says, tone mocking.

The standoff lasts mere moments, a look of impotent fury obvious on their father’s face, before he lowers the gun. ‘Grace!’ he bellows, ‘Prepare to attend to Number Four.’

As she appears all of them start towards the medical ward as well, before their father rounds on them. ‘None of you are required, return to your rooms, I will see about a fit punishment later.’

There is the tiniest pause, before it’s _Luther_ that speaks. ‘Sorry dad, I’m afraid that’s not possible.’ 

He hears their father actually sputter as they walk away from the man, before Reginald Hargreeves is amongst them, gun in one hand, look of intense irritation on his face. ‘Master Ben, Sir,’ he hears, ‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Pogo, obviously going for who he thinks will be the easiest to deal with if he’s looking for answers. 

‘I don’t know,’ is what Ben replies with. ‘Sorry Pogo, ask me later.’

They get to the ward, Mom rushing ahead of them and into her medical uniform, the bed empty— he hears Luther make a small noise in the back of his throat. He glances at him. There’s a hint of fear there, even if his brother is biting it down. The not-Christopher gently lowers Klaus onto the bed, stroking a hand across his curls, before leaning down and pressing a bloody kiss to his forehead. 

Behind them he hears their father make a noise of outrage, but his attention is taken in grabbing Diego who is lunging at the not-Christopher, knife in hand. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ Diego bellows, ‘but I know enough to know I’ve gotta kill you now.’

The not-Christopher laughs, ‘Oh mama’s boy, it is far too late for that.’ More blood and fluid froths from his mouth, running down his chin. The not-Christopher grimaces, raising a hand and wiping it away. ‘Ephemeral isn’t it? Life,’ he says, looking at his gore-smeared hand. ‘Human bodies are so weak, and that’s even before you put your knife in them a hundred-odd times.’

‘What are you talking about?’ he finds himself demanding. Eyes on that familiar, though not loved, face. 

‘Time’s up,’ the not-Christopher replies, not making any more sense than he has since the start. ‘At least I got you back to safety, hey Babydoll?’ he tightens his grip on Diego for that last, slurred word. The not-Christopher blinks. Blinks again. The black fades from his eyes until they are once more pale blue— he staggers sideways, away from Klaus, goes down with a splat. Blood pooling all around him. He’s gasping. Ruined lungs trying to bring in air, more bloody froth building at mouth and nose. He blinks rapidly, eyes fluttering, fixing on him for a moment. He sees that ruined mouth form his name, no sound escaping, then the life leaves. The last breath a wet sounding rattle. 

Christopher dies— Christopher—

Wait, where’s his—? ‘ _briefcase._ ’


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else feel like this year is passing so very, very quickly? Anyway, here we are, the end of another week, the posting of another chapter- Thank you all, as always, for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos!

He wakes in the medical ward. He can feel the edges of pain clawing at his awareness, but its intensity is softened by something sweet. Fluffy. Familiar. Some form of opioid he’d guess. 

He looks around, moving slowly, every shift of his body making the pain spike, bringing it into his mind’s eye. At first he thinks he’s alone, but then he spots him. The only person in the room other than himself.

His father. 

His father sitting by his bedside in a chair with a very upright back, one that obviously does not belong in this room. The hunting rifle is slung over the man’s lap. When Reginald Hargreeves notices him watching a little frown dances between the man’s brows. ‘Who are you?’

He frowns himself, trying to make sense of what his father just said. 

‘No,’ Reginald says, shaking his head a little, ‘No, I think that is the wrong question. I have examined your body while you were unconscious, I have taken blood, I have run tests— I am quite confident that you are Number Four. I think the question then should be _when are you from?_ ’

‘What?’ he thinks he might be a little too high to deal with this right now. What happened? The last thing he can remember was being chased down by that blond man— kicked, he was being kicked, and then he heard— ‘Jacques?’ He looks around but he can’t see the ghost. Maybe it’s all the drugs he thinks he’s on.

‘Yes, that’s another thing we will need to discuss,’ his father muses, ‘You said that name quite a lot in your sleep. For now though—’ the man shifts a little in his chair, hand curled around the hunting rifle in a way that makes it clear it could be up and aimed in moments. ‘It has been almost two weeks since your behaviour and the behaviour of your siblings has changed. Almost all of your siblings. I am still uncertain as to the behaviour of Number Seven— she seems only to have changed in response to the changes manifested in the rest of you, but change she has.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says, voice croaky and weak. It hurts to talk, pain radiating from his side. He wishes the others were here, Luther, Five, Diego, Allison— Allison would actually be really useful, she could rumour their father to forget anything he’s noticed. They’re not supposed to let the man discover that they’re from the future, or at least he thinks that’s what they all agreed on— Five agreed on. Decided. Ordered the rest of them. He wishes it was Five here now, Five would be able to handle this. He doesn’t want to face Reginald Hargreeves when he’s injured and tired and high. 

His father ignores him. ‘I wasn’t certain what was going on until I went over all the security footage of the days around the beginning of this change. It took quite some time, but eventually I found it. Number Five has been using his powers in ways I have not permitted him, _time travel_ of all things, and to bring you with him— I can only assume something has gone dreadfully wrong. Is it the _future_ that you’re from?’

He’s too tired to argue. He nods, a small movement of his aching head. 

‘The future,’ Reginald muses. ‘Hmph. Whatever this is that you are all engaging in— are you doing it under my orders?’

It’s probably all too late now. He is going to be in so much trouble. ‘No,’ he replies.

His father’s eyes widen,‘ _Against my orders_.’ He shakes his head. ‘If not because I told you to, and not because I told you not to—’ the man trails off.

‘You’re dead,’ he fills in the silence. It feels oddly satisfying to see the moment of loss of composure, confusion.

‘Then is it to avenge me? To change the past and ensure my life?’ It doesn’t sound overly as if his father cares if that’s the motivation, the words are said more out of curiosity, but still he can’t help but get a dig in.

‘Not really, I don’t think any of us much care— actually, maybe that’s wrong. I think we’re all glad you’re dead.’

‘ _Glad,_ ’ Reginald muses. ‘Hm. Then if not because of me, then why?’

He shrugs and then regrets it, hissing in a pained breath. ‘To save everyone else,’ he grits out between clenched teeth.

‘Ah!’ Reginald declares, getting to his feet in triumph. ‘I was right then. The end is coming,’ the man points at him, ‘I know you all think me cruel, heartless, but I have my reasons for what I have done—’

‘Yes,’ he interrupts, almost stunned at his own daring. ‘Except what you’ve done is bring about the apocalypse, and all you could think to do to prevent it is kill yourself. A bit too late there, dad. Next time try to do it before you drive Vanya mad, get Ben killed, and turn Luther into something he sees as a monster.’

His father frowns. Looking down at him almost like a lost child. ‘I don’t understand.’

A thought occurs to him. ‘If I explain it to you, I don’t know what you’ll do. The damage you’ll wreak—’ whether he’ll just kill Vanya outright.

‘Hm—‘ his father hums to himself for a moment, before pinning him with an assessing stare. ‘I was right. Number Seven’s behaviour is only in response to that of the rest of yours. She did not come back with you, did she? I can only assume her power got out of control, didn’t it?’

The memory comes over him of Vanya vanishing the moment they stepped through and into the past, their panic, and then finding her curled up in her bed asleep, still in a child’s version of that white tuxedo. Allison had locked them out of the room while she changed her into her pyjamas, and then they had gone to find Pogo and Allison had used her powers on him to get him to delete the footage from Vanya’s room for that night before going off to cry somewhere in Luther’s arms— He looks away. Shame starts to burble up within him, shame and fear. He wonders if Jacques is here— he can’t see him, but that doesn’t mean anything. If he is— would it be wrong to urge the ghost to kill his father for him, if it meant keeping Vanya safe?

‘I see,’ the man in question says, sinking back into the chair by his bedside. ‘I’m right. Hm—’ there is a pause. He doesn’t know what to do. His father’s face is unreadable, but eventually the man speaks again, ‘You all must have some plan, or else why are you here? Tell me about your intentions? Tell me how returning to the past will prevent your sister from losing control?’

‘It’s not that hard,’ he says after a moment. ‘She just needs to feel loved, important, like she’s one of the family.’

‘That’s all?’ his father asks. ‘You’ve not come back to attempt to train her? Or to reinforce the memory loss I had Allison inflict on her?’

He shakes his head. ‘She felt so lonely, so alone, so unimportant, so unloved by all of us— the world didn’t end because of her training or her lack of training— though putting her in that cell like that, that sure as shit didn’t help dad—’ he takes a deep breath, but the rage is building now. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that to her?’ _to me,_ the latter thought doesn’t slip his lips.

‘If what you’re saying is true you’ve seen the consequences of her powers getting loose—’

‘Preventing her powers from destroying everything shouldn’t have to mean that you destroy _her_ in the process!’ he snaps. ‘Is it really so hard to treat her with a little kindness? To explain why she needs to learn control instead of just locking her up and driving her mad?’

Those eyes fix on his face, that clever mind churning away. ‘Are you speaking of her or yourself?’

‘I don’t want to have that conversation with you,’ he says. 

‘Your behaviour entered a downward spiral once I locked you in the mausoleum,’ the man states. ‘Why?’

He shakes his head, the words slipping out a little helplessly, ‘You lock me alone in the dark with all the bad things, then become annoyed with me when there’s consequences of the bad things getting me.’

‘I don’t understand the carry on,’ his father says, dismissive. ‘They are dead. They cannot hurt you.’

‘Well you see daddy-dearest,’ he says with a bitter little chuckle, edging on the hysterical, ‘that’s where you are wrong.’ Did his father not know his powers mean that the dead can _touch_ him?

‘Explain!’ Reginald demands. ‘Surely you cannot be suggesting that the ghosts can—’ the frown deepens on the man’s face. ‘That man who brought you here— before he died— there was something very odd—’ Reginald trails off, looking disturbed. Eventually he speaks again, ‘Your powers— unshackled do they enable the ghosts to make physical contact with you?’

‘ _Ding, ding, ding,_ we have a winner,’ he mutters, sinking down on the bed and squeezing his eyes shut. He really shouldn’t have responded when his father first spoke to him, it’s all gotten out of hand from there.

‘Oh,’ is all his father says in reply. 

‘ _Oh,_ indeed,’ he mutters, wrapping his arms around his waist. The morphine or whatever it is is making him feel a little loopy, like he’s about to lose his balance if he moves too fast. It’s kind of a sickening feeling. Exhaustion starts to tear at him. He just wants to sleep, sleep and wakeup in Dave’s arms, that last day in Vietnam a bad memory, and none of what came after having ever happened.

After a long time his father clears his throat. ‘A miscalculation. On my part. Is this why after the mausoleum you became so noncompliant?’

‘What do you think?’ he sighs, opening his eyes again. Oh. There’s Jacques, behind his father, knife in hand, the ghost miming slitting the old man’s throat. He doesn’t know what he feels to see the ghost again.

‘I see,’ Reginald says. ‘I will bear that in mind when composing training exercises in the future.’ It’s notably not an apology, but he supposes it’s something, some concession to the idea that he has feelings. 

‘What are you going to do?’ he asks the man, eyeing Jacques playing with his knives, ‘Are you going to kill Vanya now that you know?’

That actually discomposes his father. The old man looks down at him, visibly stunned, the surprise changing to offence. ‘Kill _Number Seven?_ ’ he snaps. ‘Why would you even suggest such a thing? No. Of course not. I will simply have to—’ he sees the man’s throat bob, a look of discomfort on his face. ‘Make her feel more valued as a member of this family.’

‘Seriously, that’s all you’re going to do?’ he almost laughs. 

‘No matter what you all might think I am not an unreasonable man,’ his father replies. ‘Now, about this _Jacques_?’ the ghost in question perks up, coming in close, a knife hovering either side of the old man’s neck. When he doesn’t say anything his father sighs. ‘A ghost, I assume?’

He glances into those oh-so very black eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he replies. 

‘Dangerous?’ 

He nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Possibly possessing the man that carried you back to the Academy?’ 

He shrugs, then winces. He really should stop moving about so much. ‘I don’t know. I was unconscious.’

‘What about the intruder that turned on his fellows and killed so many of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ his father says after a long moment, getting back out of the chair. 

He watches the man leave without so much as a goodbye, finally calling out, right as Reginald is at the door, ‘Why did you ask _me_ all this?’

‘Instead of one of your siblings?’ the man asks, and when he nods. ‘You’ve been injured, you are on pain management, you have been showing signs of failure of emotional regulation lately, you have never been serious, you have always had trouble remaining quiet when you should—’

‘In short, _because you knew I’d answer_ ,’ he interrupts. Of fucking course.

‘Indeed,’ is all his father says, leaving the room. 

‘Well fuck you too dad,’ he murmurs under his breath. He looks at Jacques, waits for the other to offer to kill his father. Jacques does not. 

What Jacques does is come to sit in that straight-backed chair, leaning in close, the knives conspicuously absent. ‘I’m sorry my love,’ the ghost says, raising a hand and trailing fingers down the side of his face, not quite actually touching. He flinches back. Glares. Jacques sighs. ‘I fucked up, didn’t I? First to have you look at me like that, as if I was _nothing,_ just another man who has hurt you, and then to run away, to hide from you when you needed me, to let you get hurt— Oh, I really fucked up Babydoll.’

What can he say to that? It’s not like he wants to make the ghost feel any better.

‘If I say I’ll never hurt you again will you believe me?’ the ghost asks.

‘No,’ he replies, all the memories and half memories, all the drunk and high moments where strange things had happened to him that he hadn’t been able to properly understand— ‘No,’ he reiterates.

Jacques chuckles, rueful, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t believe me either. I hope you’ll at least believe that I’ll never let _anyone else_ ever hurt you again.’

‘Well that’s reassuring,’ he sighs, lifting his hands to rub them over his face and gasping, the movement feeling like it wraps a band of painful iron around his chest. What the fuck happened to him? He peers down his body, he’s naked aside from a pair of pyjama pants, eyes taking in the bandages wrapped around his chest. ‘Broken ribs?’ 

‘And some internal injuries,’ Jacques replies. ‘Daddy dearest had to stick a machine inside of you to fix some of it. I can’t say it was something I enjoyed watching.’

‘Oh,’ he says, raising a hand and resting it on his chest. He doesn’t feel like he’s been cut open. He feels sore, sick with what’s probably morphine, but not like he’s just had surgery. He then realises, panic surging over him, ‘Where are Dave’s dog tags?’

‘That fucking psycho mama’s boy brother of yours took them Babydoll.’

For a moment he can’t work out who Jacques is talking about. Psycho makes him think Five, but Five isn’t that attached to Grace so— ‘Diego?’

‘Bingo,’ Jacques says, lounging back in the chair in a way it obviously wasn’t made for. ‘I do not like that particular brother of yours— not that I like any of the rest of them, but that one really grinds my gears. I wish you’d spend a little less time with him, Darling.’

He sighs, squeezing his eyes shut; of course the ghost never actually promised to change— ‘Is that a threat?’

A pause, and then the ghost replies, sounding surprisingly resentful, ‘Of course not, Babydoll. I’m just expressing my opinion.’

He keeps his eyes shut, hoping he’ll fall into a doze. He imagines Five’s face when his brother finds out he told their father, imagines Diego’s, Allison’s, Ben’s, Luther’s— maybe not Luther’s. The blond had argued at first that they should tell the man— The future he sees is one in which any remaining intimacy between himself and his siblings disappears. Will they even let him talk to Vanya?

He hears the door open, hears footsteps approaching, hears the sound of someone sitting down, hears Jacques snarling ‘For fuck’s sake—’ opens his eyes to see Diego sitting in the chair, Jacques on his feet and storming away. He almost laughs, imagines Jacques face when Diego sat on him.

‘I’m sorry!’ Diego blurts out the moment the man realises his eyes are open. He blinks, confused. While he’s confused Diego actually takes one of his hands, his brother’s hand warm and a bit sweaty. 

‘What?’ 

‘I almost got you killed,’ Diego’s voice is full of self-recriminations. ‘I drove you away from the Academy, where you were safe, and out there where that assassin could get you.’

He frowns, ‘Assassin?’ focussing on that part of what Diego’s saying for now. ‘So he does work for the same people that Five used to?’

‘ _Did,_ ’ Diego stresses. ‘He’d dead now. In fact I think he was dead when we found the two of you, except he was up and walking around with you in his arms, and Five says that even though it was this _Christopher’s_ body he doesn’t think it was Christopher’s mind. He called you “BBBB-Babydoll” Klaus, like on the perfume. Who is he? A ghost? Is he a ghost?’

His gaze flickers to the ghost in question— lurking in the corner and playing with his knives again— and back to Diego, but obviously his brother noticed that quick shift of attention, because then Diego is demanding ‘Is he here? He’s here, isn’t he?’

What’s the point in hiding it? He’s too tired. All worn out and still waiting for a new set of consequences to get him. ‘Yeah, he’s a ghost,’ he replies, meeting that black gaze, Jacques evident annoyance. ‘I don’t know why he can possess people, he’s not exactly forthcoming about things.’

‘Is he the one who killed that drug dealer?’ Diego asks, ‘Is he dangerous?’

‘Yes and yes,’ he replies.

‘How long’s he been hanging around you? Why is he hanging around you? Wwwww-why did he kill that guy?’ Now Diego is getting excitable about it, leaning forward in the chair, eyes roving the room, all it’s empty corners.

He thinks for a moment. ‘He’s been hanging around since I was a kid and I don’t want to tell you any more than that,’ and then, when Diego starts to protest, ‘Can’t you please just respect me enough to let me set my limits here? Some shit you just can’t talk about as easy as that. _Please Diego._

He can see his brother doesn’t like the idea, but eventually Diego actually settles back in the chair, quiet. ‘So what are we going to do about him, if he’s dangerous?’

‘Nothing,’ he replies as Jacques stalks over, knife flashing out to hover just in front of Diego’s neck. ‘ _Just please don’t_ ’ he yelps out, ignoring Diego’s splutterings in favour of Jacques.

‘Why not?’ the ghost asks, leaning in close to Diego’ face hovering over his brother’s head, black eyes meeting his, ‘he hurts you and I fucking hate him Babydoll. The world wouldn’t even notice if he was gone.’

‘But I would!’ he snaps, trying to sit up, gasping then at the pain that lances through him. Diego is immediately out of his seat, trying to get him to lie back down. ‘I would and it would hurt me. I know you didn’t make any promises about it earlier, but I’d really fucking appreciate it if you would stop fucking _threatening the people I love._ ’

‘How about you and me make another deal then?’ Jacques drawls. ‘I won’t hurt them, any of them, but you owe me a little special treatment the moment you’re no longer thirteen.’

‘Ok,’ he agrees. He just can’t deal with Jacques and the knives and Diego all the time. ‘Ok. Ok.’

‘Was he threatening me?’ Diego asks, his brother’s breath wafting warm against his neck as Diego helps him resettle back against the pillows. 

He nods, feeling his face contort into a grimace. For a split-second he thinks he might cry. What’ll Diego think? He’s drawn the attention of a monster to the other. 

‘That must be difficult,’ is what Diego says, eyes flickering wildly around the room. ‘Where is he? What does he say he’s going to do?’

‘Just leave it Diego,’ he sighs. ‘He’s backed off for now.’

Diego obviously does not want to leave it, but eventually he subsides back into the chair, eyes only flicking to the corners of the room every now and then. Every time his brother looks Jacques’ way the ghost makes a rude gesture, at one point going so far as to grab the shadowy front of his ill-defined trousers, thrusting his hips and shaking his cock at Diego. It’s actually really kind of childish.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Diego says suddenly, dragging his attention away from the ghost. His brother fishes Dave’s dog tags out of his pocket. ‘I didn’t think you’d want dad getting hold of them,’ he says, holding them out. 

He reaches out, lets his fingers brush the metal, warm from his brother’s body heat. ‘Thank you,’ he says, voice small, and then carefully lifts his head from the pillow so Diego can slip the chain around his neck. Anything further that could be said between the two of them is ruined by a flash of blue light and Five stepping into the room.

‘Tell me everything you did in the last fifteen minutes,’ the other demands, stomping over.

‘What are you talking about?’ Diego says, then, moving defensively in front of him.

‘Here,’ Five says, teleporting around Diego and holding out a piece of paper. He takes it, blinking down at the sentence.

_Order to terminate Klaus Hargreeves cancelled. Await further instruction._

‘What is this?’ he asks, running his finger across the words.

‘This was just sent to Christopher,’ Five says, ‘Or Christopher’s body. Obviously his tracker hasn’t started transmitting the loss of vital signs just yet. The Temps Commission no longer think killing you will help bring about the Apocalypse, why? What did you do?’

Oh. ‘I told dad.’

‘You did what?!’ Five demands. 

‘Maybe not so much told, as confirmed what he already knew,’ he says, feeling very, very small under Five’s withering glare.

‘Oh my God, you really are an idiot,’ Five hisses. ‘Why the fuck would you think that was a good idea?’

That stings. It’s not surprising, but it still stings. ‘Don’t be a fucking asshole!’ Diego snarls. That is a surprise. But Diego has been so weird recently, so maybe it isn’t really.

‘He’s not stupid,’ he tells Five. ‘What did you think would happen when we showed up and started acting differently? And when we got Pogo to wipe the tapes we missed whichever one showed us arriving back here, because there was one, and he’s _seen_ it.’

‘Ok. Ok,’ Five says, pacing back and forth for a moment by his bedside, ‘tell me everything he said, everything you said— it’s alright. I can work with this. I can— I— well, _come on_!’

So he does, as much as he remembers— except, of course, leaving out everything about Jacques. He doesn’t owe Five that much.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: For violence and the general miserable rapey shit that permeates this fic.
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Some of you might remember I mentioned that my dog was sick and that I might be going on hiatus, well I'm still not sure what's wrong with her, some other things are happening in my personal life that I won't bore you with, and [at least in part because of everything that's been going on] I have come to the realisation that I really want to try and work on some original fiction. So I am preparing for an indefinite fic writing hiatus. What this means for this story is that I will be fixing up and posting what I've already written over the next two weeks and then taking a break from it. I am not sure if or when I'll return, which I am sorry about, especially as you have all been such a kind and appreciative audience. I know how annoying it is when someone just stops writing a fic you're enjoying, but I hope it's a little consolation that the hiatus will be coming at a natural break in the fic, sort of the end of what was going to be part one, so that while there will not be a full resolution of the story it won't be interrupted mid scene, if that makes sense? I'd just like to thank you all again and say how much I've enjoyed writing for you, and how much I hope you enjoy the rest of what I have written!

He’s allowed to go to his room by the end of the day, though advised to take it easy for a few more days. Apparently whatever surgery his father performed on him was laparoscopic, the incisions tiny, and his recovery remarkably rapid. Diego and Mom are the two to help him back to his room, his brother still fussing over him in a way he can’t understand and seems to be driving Jacques insane. 

He’s alone for a moment while Diego goes to fetch his knives and their care kit, but for the rest of the day Diego is by his bedside. Ben drops in for a while, sits on the bed beside him and takes his hand, squeezing it almost painfully. The other doesn’t say anything for the half an hour or so he lingers, right up until the end, when he gets off the bed, looks at him, and says ‘Don’t ever fucking do that again. You hear me? I can’t talk to you if _you’re_ the one doing the haunting!’

‘I’m ok,’ he reassures his brother, ‘look at me, perfectly fine.’

‘No you’re not,’ Ben mutters, ‘still, don’t go getting almost beaten to death by assassins in the future.’

‘I will try not to,’ he replies, and means it.

A while later Luther and Allison drop in, the pair of them holding hands and looking like worried parents. Not much is said again, just some general pleasantries and wishes he gets better soon, but he thinks they mean it, so it leaves him feeling light and almost happy. 

Vanya shows up with Mom when the latter brings him and Diego food, sitting on the bed exactly where Ben had been, eating and chatting away. She brought her violin with her, which almost drives Diego away, but she looks at their brother, eyes all innocent, and asks him if there’s any songs he’d like to hear, and it’s obvious that then Diego feels obligated to stay.

It takes a while for Diego to relax, but eventually he does, and it’s nice. It’s really nice. Spending time with the two of them, everything peaceful, Jacques once more so hypnotised by Vanya’s playing that he’s not even trying to threaten Diego or make obscene gestures at him. He doesn’t know what that’s about. He does know that Jacques seems to be less and less tolerant of Diego— but what can he do about it? Jacques did promise not to— Well, Jacques said he wouldn’t, but also implied there would be a price to pay for the ghost’s compliance. 

A million memories cross his mind of being drunk, high, strung out, things touching him, crawling up between his thighs, bent over in alleys, in bathrooms, pressed up against walls by something he couldn’t see, confused, out of his head, not knowing what was happening— and amongst it memories of people he’s been with, people whose eyes he could swear weren’t as dark as they looked while they were inside of him—

_’Oh, look at you little boy. Is that nasty dead man hurting you? We could make a deal— How about it? I’ll get rid of the nasty man, I’ll make sure he never comes back, that none of the ghosts that want to hurt you like that ever come back— and what’s more I’ll punish all the nasty men like him that think they’re allowed to hurt you— but in return— In return— hm, look at you. How old are you? You look like you’ll be a pretty thing when you’re ripe on the branch. Eighteen is the age they insist on in this day and age, isn’t it? Eighteen, as if it matters at all— but eighteen should be old enough that you’ll have started to grow into your looks. I prefer them a little older myself, mid-twenties, once the puppy fat has worn off— but good old Jacques probably isn’t capable of being that patient. So, eighteen. How about it Babydoll? No more nasty men like him, Jacques will deal with them all, if you agree to be mine from the moment you turn eighteen?’_

Well, no one is ever going to say it’s not his fault for agreeing. For letting his fear and pain and disgust at what that one other nasty little ghost had been doing to him, had done to him before, was promising to do to him again and again convince him making that deal was a good idea. Eighteen had seemed so far away, a lifetime away. Anything to stop what was happening in the moment. Heh. What more can Jacques ask of him? What more can Jacques take?

After Vanya’s finished practicing they start chatting. Even at thirteen she wants to pursue a career in music, and he encourages her, tells her how good she is— which Diego agrees. She laughs it off at first, but their sincerity must get to her because suddenly she blushes bright pink and hides her head in her hands, ‘You really think I’m that good? That I could be that good? That I could be, I don’t know, _first chair_ of an orchestra one day?’

‘I _know_ it,’ he says, and even though the memory hurts, fuck does it hurt, how good she is to have gotten that far strikes him, and how little they did to affirm her talents. ‘You are amazing Vanya.’

She gets giggly at the praise, and then even more so when Diego adds, ‘I mean, I don’t know anything about music, but even I know you’re good.’

She puts the violin away and creeps up the bed so she can sit beside him, checking to make sure she’s not hurting him. ‘What do you want to be?’ she asks, ‘Both of you, you know, when you grow up?’

He doesn’t have an answer. All his hopes and dreams died years ago, really. He’d thought for a while when he was a kid that he wanted to do something creative, make something he could see in the world, something to prove he was there— but then— he never set out for the life he’d ended up living, but realistically how many kids’ dreams only stretch so far as mostly homeless junkie and whore and thief? Maybe there are some out there, but he thinks to himself that even those that know that’s where they’re going to end up, even those that are resigned to it, must occasionally dream a little bigger. ‘I don’t know,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Maybe I can run your fanclub.’

She laughs, slapping him on the upper arm so gently he barely feels it. ‘Like I’ll have a fanclub— what about you Diego?’

He shrugs. ‘I wanted to be a cop— but now I’m not so sure.’

‘A cop—’ she looks at their brother critically for a moment, then laughs. ‘Yeah, I can see it. The uniform. The doughnuts. Pulling people over for speeding—’

‘Not a traffic cop,’ he says, sounding fond, a little exasperated, ‘A _cop _cop. Like, serious crimes.’__

__‘Like what you do now?’ she asks, ‘All of you. You know, the Umbrella Academy?’_ _

__He shakes his head. ‘No. Not really like that. Not with dad in command, you know?’_ _

__She’s quiet for a tiny moment, then she says, ‘Yeah, I know.’ Then, out of nowhere, she asks him, ‘Do you think Justin Timberlake is cute? Because I don’t, but I sometimes feel like I’m supposed to?’_ _

__‘Err,’ he mumbles, brain scrambling after the sudden change in conversation tracks. He contemplates Justin Timberlake for a moment, then shrugs, ‘I don’t know. I guess so? He’s not hideous.’_ _

__‘But would you date him?’ she asks._ _

__‘Well he has got money,’ is the first thing he thinks to say, which sounds bad, so he adds ‘I really don’t know. Diego, would you date Justin Timberlake?’ he hasn’t thought about Justin Timberlake in years— which probably doesn’t say much for the man’s current career._ _

__Instead of getting wound up Diego replies with a smirk and, ‘I don’t know. Is he going to pay for dinner?’_ _

__‘So neither of you really want to date Justin Timberlake?’ she asks, just to be sure, and when they both agree sinks back on the pillows beside him with a relieved sigh. Has her lack of desire to date Justin Timberlake been bothering her? Vanya already told him she thinks she likes girls, but she’s probably not sure just yet. The Justin Timberlake thing is probably just a part of her working herself out._ _

__He can remember being wound up about all sorts of stupid things when he was thirteen, in amongst all the more serious topics. Like he had a crush on this older girl he used to buy weed from for a while, mainly because she was both mean as hell and terrifying, and for some reason that had been intolerably seductive for thirteen-year-old him, and he was convinced she thought his curls were stupid, so for a while he tried to iron them flat. With their mom’s iron. Thank fuck he didn’t burn himself more than a couple of times, and never badly. Then she got busted and sent to juvie and he got over her._ _

__There is a little pause, Vanya’s eyes flicking between the two of them, before she leans in and whispers in his ear, ‘Is it ok if I ask what kind of boys you like in front of Diego?’_ _

__‘Of course,’ he replies, and then ‘Why do you want to know though? I’m not that interesting.’_ _

__‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs a little shrug, ‘I think you’re interesting and I want to know more about you.’ And, probably, herself. Sometimes comparing and contrasting ourselves with others helps us to understand our own selves better._ _

__‘So,’ she says, louder, so Diego can hear, ‘What kind of boys do you like?’_ _

__He thinks of all the answers he would have given over the years. Guys with big cocks. Guys with a lot of money. Guys with that narcissistic kind of confidence. Guys with a nice house. Guys that can get a lot of drugs easily. Guys that are warm. Guys that will hold him after they’ve fucked him, even if only for the night. Guys he can lose himself in. Guys whose own sense of self was so strong he didn’t exist, could relax into the oblivion of self when he was with them. Guys that make really good Osso Bucco. Heh. — And then he describes Dave, ‘Guys that are kind, confident, giving, forgiving, patient, calm, smart, affectionate— and not affected. Honest guys. Real guys. Guys that like me too.’_ _

__‘Oh,’ she says, voice thoughtful. ‘What about you Diego?— not what _boys_ you like, but what _girls,_ unless you like boys too— actually, what kind of girls do you like Klaus?’_ _

__He shrugs, ‘Pretty much the same kind of girls. People are people. So, Diego—?’_ _

__Diego laugh, a little awkwardly, and then shrugs, ‘I dunno. Cute girls. Cute girls that are _good_ people, you know?’ He’s probably thinking of Detective Patch. She seems to fit both criteria._ _

__They chat for a while more, but he’s starting to tire, and then she pulls out her violin and starts practicing lullabies on him which quickly drives him into sleep’s waiting arms. It only occurs to him in the morning that none of them have asked about Jacques._ _

__The next day their father gives them the first mission since they’ve been back. Well, their father gives everyone but him— as he’s still recovering from his injuries— and Vanya a mission— though at least Vanya is permitted to go observe, and he’s stuck at home alone all day aside from Mom, Pogo— who seems to be avoiding him— and Jacques. The ghost is a stormy presence, visibly irritated from the moment he wakes up. He spends the morning trying to fall back asleep, trying to ignore the ghost’s pacing and muttering, and occasional moments of demanding his attention to apologize for getting him hurt, to reiterate the promise that he’ll never let anyone else hurt him again— he can’t work out what Jacques is thinking, and that’s as fucking scary as the rest of it, ‘cause yeah, he likes being unpredictable himself— there’s a degree of safety in making sure those around you can never perfectly predict what you’re gonna do next— but Jacques, men like Jacques— unpredictability is always a breath away from violence, cruelty._ _

__The desperate, terrifying loneliness of just being alone with Jacques around drives him into the kitchen for lunch. Mom greets him, happy, so happy, and makes him anything he wants— except he doesn’t know what he wants, so she makes him homemade chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese— all the while he watches her and wonders at the marvel his father has made._ _

__Of all the things Reginald Hargreeves ever brought into the world Mom must be the most benevolent, the kindest, the best. An unrecognised Magnum Opus. He asks if she wants to sit with him while he eats, which she does, and then they chat— though it’s about nothing much. After he’s done eating he lets himself lean against her side, lets himself enjoy her arm around him. ‘I love you Mom,’ he tells her._ _

__‘I love you too,’ she replies, frowning a little as if she’s trying to work out what he’s thinking._ _

__It’s when he’s on his way back to his room that he hears it— the smallest little sound, a clatter quickly muffled, from _Five’s_ room. Maybe his brother is back? He pushes open the door—_ _

__That’s not his brother._ _

__That looks like another one of the assholes employed by his brother’s ex-employers. The man, middle aged and utterly non-descript, is tossing the room— in fact he’s already tossed Delores, both halves of her, onto the floor and hiked up her dress. ‘Where’d the little shit hide it?’ he hears the man mutter a split-second before his presence is noticed._ _

__He ducks around the doorframe the second the gun is pulled. ‘Where’s the fucking briefcase?!’ the man bellows._ _

__‘In your hand you complete and utter idiot!’ he bellows back, because it’s true, the man is holding a briefcase— in appearance the same as the one that delivered him to Dave._ _

__‘Not this one you little imbecile!’ the man screeches, ‘the other one. The one Number Five took from Christopher.’_ _

__‘Imbecile’s a big word,’ he calls back, edging away down the corridor. What the fuck’s he supposed to do now? Absolutely everyone who would be useful in this situation is not here. ‘Are you sure you’re old enough to handle it?’ Why is he even engaging with the man? He should just be running. How’s he going to run with his side like this?_ _

__‘You’re the dumb little shit whose execution order has just been cancelled, aren’t you?’ he hears footsteps getting closer. Great, now the man’s following him. ‘Well I’ve got news for you buddy, they didn’t give us any orders to _prevent_ you getting killed.’_ _

__‘Well, fuck,’ he sighs, one hand going to his still sore, still bandaged, side. The deepest breath he can manage and he launches himself down the hall, fleeing towards his father’s study. There has to be a way of contacting the man in there, right? Fuck it hurts. He can’t quite pull in enough air, the world going blurry, but he can’t stop— _Bam—_ especially as the man is now shooting at him._ _

___‘This right here, this is the final fucking straw,’ _he hears hissed, a moment before the man screams.__ _ _

____He skids to a stop, banging into the wall, and turns to see Jacques, corporeal, stalking after the intruder. Unlike Ben’s blueness, Jacques is still perfectly monochrome, black and white and shades of grey, he realises through his rising horror. He can see that now, the terrible embodied form far enough from him he can process the data coming in. He can’t feel Jacques though, there is no cold, there is no sense of something being taken from him— oh shit._ _ _ _

____Oh shit._ _ _ _

_____How is that possible?_ _ _ _ _

____As the man whirls on the ghost and starts shooting, bullets actually hitting Jacques’ form, flattening against ghostly flesh, dropping to the floor with metallic little plinks— he sees something. A thin strand, something like a strand, almost invisible, nothing more than a tiny shadow in the air, leading from the intruder’s mouth and nose and into Jacques ghastly form. Jacques isn’t using his powers. Jacques is pulling life force from the intruder himself and using that to manifest. _Jacques should not be able to do that.__ _ _ _

____He backs away, eyes fixed on the two as the intruder takes a wild swing at the ghost that Jacques dodges, ‘What the fuck are you?!’ the man bellows._ _ _ _

____‘Your death,’ is what Jacques answers, and then makes that creepy purring noise, the ghost’s knives appearing in his hands. ‘You know,’ the ghost says, conversationally, as he darts forward just brushing the tip of the blade across the man’s face so a thin line of red wells up, ‘I am looking forward to this. Poor old Jacques has got some emotions he wants to get out. Now say you’re sorry.’_ _ _ _

____‘Sorry for what?’ the intruder scoffs, bringing the briefcase up and around in an arc that should have slammed it into Jacques head, if the ghost didn’t become incorporeal for a split second. The briefcase crashes against the wall in a shower of sparks, dropping from the intruder’s hand._ _ _ _

____‘For scaring my Darling, of course,’ Jacques purrs, darting in to leave another thin slice across the man’s face. ‘I did promise no one else would ever hurt him. So apologize to Babydoll.’_ _ _ _

____He skitters away from the pair, thinking of fleeing— but where can he go? Jacques always follows him. Jacques who can become solid, corporeal, even without his powers. Jacques who can possess people. Jacques who likes to hurt people— No one will be safe as long as the ghost is around and the ghost will be around as long as he is, so—_ _ _ _

____It’s not long after that the screaming begins. After a while he goes away, curled up in the corner, arms wrapped around his head as if they can shield him from the noise, the blood._ _ _ _

____‘I’m sorry,’ he hears again and again, ‘I’m sorry.’_ _ _ _

____‘Not good enough,’ Jacques crows. ‘ _Try again._ ’_ _ _ _


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ! Here we have another chapter from Five's perspective. Thank you all for being so understanding, and for reading, leaving comments and kudos

[Five]

They’re almost back to the Academy after foiling the jewellery heist when Pogo contacts their father. 

It’s not been a good day. It’s been a pretty bad day. Not that he can really talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Not even with Delores— and her nagging has been getting on his last nerve. They have these fights, every now and then— He wonders if the rest of them realise— but none of them have said anything. What can they say? It’s not like society has a template for this. As far as anniversaries go the anniversary of the day you accidentally trapped yourself for decades in a hellish wasteland probably isn’t the type Hallmark has a card for. It’s funny, there wasn’t a mission last time—

He’s picking dried blood out from under his nails, wincing a little at how stiff his fingers feel— bruises overlaying bruises. Bare fists are never a great idea, for fighting, for punishment, for extracting information, but there’s something satisfying in it, the feel of flesh and bone crushing flesh and bone— not great to indulge all that often, but a man sometimes needs some stress relief. Delores has been giving him shit about it of course. He’d tried to stick to knives and using the jewellery store robbers’ own stupidity against them— if only dad would let him have a gun— 

Suddenly his father is putting pedal to the metal and ordering, ‘Number Five return to the Academy at once to protect Number Four.’

He doesn’t bother asking questions, stepping out into the main hall of the Academy between one blink and the next. ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ he hears, ‘Try again. Good old Jacques is starting to think you’re not actually sorry.’ The voice is deep, strange, very strange, echoing oddly off the walls, and undeniably sinister. Where is it coming from?

Pogo steps out of the shadows, seeming pale and shaky, before pointing to the upper floor. Then they both hear a cry of pain, Pogo wincing, and then a shaky, cracking voice whimper ‘I’m sorry Babydoll.’ It’s not Klaus’ voice. That’s the only comfort.

‘What’s going on?’ he demands.

‘I don’t know Master Five, neither myself nor your Mother can get close. There appears to be an intruder, two intruders; one seems to be torturing the other— as far as we can tell Master Klaus is up there as well. We have no idea if he is safe—’ a slight pause, ‘The one doing the torturing sounds very much like the— the _man_ who brought your brother back when he was injured.’

‘Fuck,’ he mutters. It can’t be the Commission. The last order was to leave Klaus alone. If this has something to do with that ghost— 

After he returned from hiding Christopher’s briefcase and having a think about what to do about Klaus’ stupidity he found himself in the middle of a massive sibling argument. Nothing was resolved, of course— but they are all now aware that Klaus is being haunted by some malevolent spirit that can possess people— but what can any of them do about a ghost? Nothing. It would help if they knew more but Ben apparently has never seen the spirit in question and Diego is insisting they give Klaus more space, more time, that they let their brother dictate the terms of discussing this _Jacques_ instead of forcing him to divulge the information. There is guilt there, in Diego— a useless guilt, he would say, but the rest of them overruled him.

He should have protested when their father said there was a mission, one of them at least should have stayed with their injured brother. He focuses, steps out onto the upper gallery. 

The first thing he notices is the man, larger than life, monochromatic like the star of an old film. He’s good looking in the same golden age of Hollywood way, but the black hair that looks like it was once neatly brushed back and pomaded in place is hanging in wild strands around his face, and his eyes are less like those of an old fashioned heartthrob than two holes into the abyss. Black. Blacker than pitch. He seems to be wearing a suit, the cut old fashioned but still stylish, though it’s hard to tell, because the suit’s almost as black as his eyes—   
All these are momentary observations between spotting the man, spotting the pile of what might as well be ground beef whimpering on the ground in front of him, spotting Klaus curled up in the corner, splattered in the ground beef’s blood— and the ghost spotting him. ‘Oh looky, it’s the kiddie,’ that sinister voice coos, ‘Come to collect your colleague?’ the man kicks the bloody figure in front of him, forcing a whimper out of the mass of raw flesh. 

He doesn’t bother responding, pulling a knife and teleporting behind the figure, stabbing down into the connection between neck and shoulder— the knife slips through the figure as if there’s nothing there as he loses his balance, catching himself on one knee in the puddle of blood surrounding the nearly dead man on the floor. His eyes meet pale brown ones in that ground beef face— familiar— before he bounces back up to his feet, whirling on the monochromatic figure, stabbing out once, twice, the blade passing through each time.

Well. 

‘What are you?’ he asks, searching for confirmation, glancing at Klaus. ‘A ghost?’ _The_ ghost?

‘Clever boy,’ the man, no, the _ghost_ replies. ‘You always were the smartest of them.’

He ignores the ghost in favour of his brother, ‘Klaus. _Stop conjuring him._ ’

‘Oh Babydoll can’t do anything,’ the ghost says, ‘It’s not his soul I’m eating.’

‘ _Klaus,_ ’ he tries again.

‘Are you just ignoring me kiddie?’ the ghost purrs, suddenly in front of him, blocking his view of his brother, ‘That’s very rude of you. Anyway, you should be on your knees thanking good old Jacques. That nasty man I’ve been hurting has had his hands up your dolly’s skirts.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ What the fuck is going on? How is he supposed to respond to this? He needs to get Klaus to safety— he teleports around the ghost and squats down beside his brother, reaching out a hand—

_Bam._ Something grabs him and flings him away, until he smacks harshly against the wall. He hears Klaus cry out, his brother uncurling and whimpering out ‘No, no, no, no— Jacques—’

‘No touching,’ the ghost says, stalking over to stand over him. ‘He’s not _yours_ to touch.’

At that moment he hears the door downstairs slam open, his father’s voice calling for Grace, for Pogo, and then the sound of footsteps running, running, more than one pair, up the stairs. ‘Go with your Mother Number Seven,’ his father orders, ‘Prepare the medical ward in case it’s needed. Number Seven! Number Seven! Get back here!’ The ghost tsks.

‘Klaus!’ that’s Diego. ‘Klaus!’ the sound getting louder.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ the ghost snarls, turning around. He takes the opportunity to pull himself to his feet, almost tripping over— is that? It is. A briefcase, not the one he took from Christopher from the slight difference in the scuff marks. He leans down to pick it up.

‘Oh fuck, Klaus!’ that’s Diego. As he picks up the briefcase his brother crests the stairs, bolting over to Klaus’ side, hands going to his upper arms. ‘Are you ok? Come on, we’ve got to get you out of—’

‘Oh no you don’t, mama’s boy,’ the ghost says, sounding absolutely vicious. Crueller than he has yet. A knife, a real beauty of a knife, the sort that just looks like it’s be perfectly balanced and sharper than a razor, appears in the ghost’s hand. ‘You piss me off you know?’ the ghost snarls. ‘Touching, always touching. He does not belong to _you._ Someone should teach you to keep your hands to yourself—’

‘No!’ that’s Klaus, voice stronger than before. There is a moment of flailing, Diego trying to keep himself between their brother and the ghost, before Klaus manages to come out in front, shielding Diego as best as he can. ‘No. You promised. You _promised._ Don’t you fucking touch him.’

‘You’ll only miss him for a little while,’ the ghost wheedles, ‘Come on Babydoll. I won’t kill him, how about that? I promise, just let me cut a couple bits off—’

‘No!’ Klaus snarls, puffed up and protective, supressing all of Diego’s flailing attempts to escape to resume the protective pose.

‘What the fuck is going on here?!’ Luther roars as the rest of the siblings appear.

‘Oh great,’ the ghost scoffs, ‘daddy’s perfect soldier, the queen bitch, Benny-boy, and the fucking end of days have arrived. What are any of you going to do to improve this situation? Hm?’

His ears feel weird. Full. Kind of hot— can he hear something? It’s almost like a high-pitched—

_Boom._ Heat. Pain. Lances up his arm from the hand holding the briefcase. He tries to drop it, but it feels like it’s fused to his flesh. The world flashes gold, then blue. Blue. Blue. 

He blinks. There is nothing. He blinks. The briefcase drops from his hand.

The wreckage of the Academy stretches out around him, ash falling from the sky in familiar drifts. He blinks. ‘What the fuck happened?’ he hears chorused slightly out of sync from around him. Then Allison, ‘Oh,’ and then again, ‘Oh, I can talk— Ben!’ 

‘Ben!’ is again chorused, slightly out of sync, and then ‘Vanya?’

He blinks again. Well shit. Shaking off the old dread, all those old feelings—he takes stock. 

First things first. He is still thirteen, ‘Fuck,‘ he mutters. 

Second thing second, Vanya is still thirteen. Third thing third they are the only ones that are, the rest— including living, breathing _Ben_ at almost seventeen— are in the bodies they had before they went back in time. 

He finds himself laughing, laughing. ‘Five!’ he hears. ‘Five! What the fuck is going on?!’

‘Welcome to the end of the world!’ he declares, kicking the sparking carcass of the briefcase.

Then Vanya starts screaming.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _ **FUCKING GREAT BIG, GIANT, HUGE TRIGGER WARNING**_ : For attempted rape. Also a bit of suicidal ideation.
> 
> Um. So here, have this chapter. I hope you've all had a good weekend!

Looking down at his own corpse is kind of an odd experience. Of course it’s hardly the first time he’s died, he lost count sometime after the eighth OD— he’s never seen it though, and it never seems to stick. This looks like it’s stuck. Those bullet holes in his chest— 

He lies sprawled across the front steps of the Academy in a rather fabulous black velvet outfit, Diego’s corpse— complete with matching bullet holes— lying protectively over his lower body. Nearby are Allison and Luther, their cause of death not immediately obvious, and a dark-haired stranger that looks like she was probably quite attractive before someone shot her in the face. ‘No,’ Five is saying, pacing and shaking his head. ‘No, this is wrong, it didn’t happen like this.’

‘Things have obviously changed,’ he says. ‘For one, I do not own that outfit— though I _would_ love to own that outfit. At least I died looking fabulous.’

‘This is serious Klaus!’ Five snaps.

Of course it’s fucking serious, but so is everything. Serious and not serious. Heh. In truth he’s feeling strange and cold and shocky, the memory of what Jacques was doing tearing at him, what Jacques had been doing to that intruder, what Jacques was threatening to do to Diego— what Jacques can now do to _him._ he wraps his arms around his now thirty-year-old waist. It’s a little waist. He never eats that much— too busy getting off his head. He feels so very breakable right now. _There’s a price, always a price._

‘So, things have changed. Isn’t that what you wanted?’ he squats down by his own side, trying to get his own hazel eyes to shut, but it seems he’s determined to stare into infinity. There are a pair of slides on his feet, like but unlike the ones from back then, more modern looking— cute. He thinks he still likes them. 

‘Oh God, don’t,’ that’s Diego, who leans down and pulls him away from his corpse. 

Vanya’s still crying, curled up in Allison’s arms. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not the only one. Five’s got his pacing, but Ben is just standing there, staring at the wreckage of the world, while Luther has collapsed by the side of his own corpse, Allison’s corpse, their sister’s dead, floppy hand, now in held in the blond’s own, tears streaming clean, pink lines through the grey grime accumulating across Luther’s skin. All their skins. Everything. 

Nearby a brunet stranger— not so stranger. A man who was once a middle-aged invader of the Academy— and is now a nondescript looking man in his mid-thirties— is lying curled up, a high pitched whine escaping his throat in a constant drone. So far he’s been pretty much nonresponsive. Who he is, his mission, all of it trapped inside a mind that Jacques has trapped inside itself. He hasn’t seen Jacques since they ended up here— but then it’s barely been an hour.

‘Come on, let’s—’ Diego begins, but can’t end, because there’s nothing to do. Still, he lets his brother guide him to sit down on some of the more stable looking rubble. Diego takes a seat beside him. They sit. He knows both of their gazes are flickering over to their corpses every now and then. Diego lying over him— what the fuck happened? Five has said that it wasn’t like this last time—

This is because of the briefcase, the intruder’s briefcase. It exploded while Five was holding it and dumped them all here. ‘Do you have a plan?’ he finds himself asking, wondering why no one else has already done so. ‘What are we going to do now? Can you even return us to the past?’

‘I don’t fucking know!’ Five snaps. ‘Fuck. Just— fuck! Stay here—’ and then he vanishes. Fantastic. 

For a moment he feels like screaming, before sighing and leaning back against the rubble. 

‘We should try to find Mom,’ Diego says eventually. ‘Maybe she’s ok. There’s no guarantee having the Academy collapse on her would kill her—’

‘Ok,’ he says after a long while. ‘Ok.’ It’s something to do. 

They get up and start crawling over the wreckage, calling for Mom. After a moment Ben joins them, and then eventually Luther. Allison is still holding Vanya. Vanya who is still thirteen— how will they explain this all to her. 

They do find Mom, eventually, after they’ve found Pogo. Neither of them are alive. Delores though— he finds her in the wreckage, in a ragged and age-worn version of the chiffon dress he picked out for her. He pulls her out and dusts her off, looking her over for damage. She’s once more back to the broken torso he remembers from the first time around. 

Diego is sitting by Mom’s side, holding her lifeless hand and staring into the abyss. Ben and Luther are wrapping Pogo in a sheet— a shroud. Are they going to bury him?

‘We should find something to eat, to drink,’ he says, carefully placing Delores on the piece of wreckage where he and Diego were sitting earlier. ‘We don’t know when Five will be back and there’s nothing we can do until he is.’ Fuck. He really does sound like a responsible adult right now. 

‘I think we should get away from here,’ Allison says, ‘from the— _bodies._ ’

‘Five said to stay here,’ Luther replies, but his voice sounds weak. He’s shaking.

‘We won’t go far,’ their sister says. ‘We just need to find a bit of shelter, just need to get off the street.’

They leave the stranger behind— where can he go?— while they stumble off together, at first something like a zombie hoard, the broken body of Delores in his arms adding to the impression, before they end up all walking side by side. He finds himself walking beside Diego, and then— after she comes up to him and says, ‘You’re Klaus, aren’t you?’— Vanya, so he’s walking between the two of them, Allison on her other side, Luther near her, Ben eventually falling into step beside Diego.

Being told about the apocalypse, seeing its early stages— it’s nothing compared to walking through the aftermath. ‘What happened?’ Vanya asks eventually. ‘What happened to the world? What happened to all of you? Why are you all old?— aside from Ben. Why is Ben younger than the rest of you?’

‘Five’s powers,’ Allison answered. ‘We time travelled.’

‘But that doesn’t explain why everything’s like this,’ their sister protests, ‘Unless Five did this too?’

‘None of us know why this happened,’ he answers her. It’s true. They don’t. Not this time— Five said things were different. 

Not that far away they find a brownstone house that hasn’t been completely destroyed. It’s one of the middle ones of a row— expensive looking, old money— the ones on the end nothing but rubble, the ones on either side half-collapsed, this one intact for the first two floors, and only a little damaged above that. ‘It looks safe—’ Ben says. 

After creeping up the rubble filled drive and breaking in they explore it a little, concluding that it is probably safe. It’s is very obviously a rich person’s house, in a very different way than the Academy is obviously a rich person’s house. This is much more neat, less eccentric, everything colour coordinated, everything in place that a rich person who likes to think of themselves as sophisticated— perhaps even an Anglophile— would have, even the library is full of leather bound books that have obviously never been read. There’s no one around, no bodies— they must have been out when it happened. ‘Someone should go leave a message for Five, tell him where we are,’ Luther says— and then, ‘I’ll go, the rest of you stay here.’

‘We shouldn’t split up,’ Allison argues, and Luther doesn’t seem all that inclined to disagree with her, so there’s a momentary impasse and then Diego volunteers ‘How about me and Klaus go?’ and he thinks to himself, ah, Diego is going to ask him about Jacques. Truth told it’s a miracle the rest of them have been so distracted by finding themselves in the future they seem to have all but forgotten about the ghost.

He props Delores up on the burgundy Chesterfield lounge before they go— funny that he’s become so attached to her recently. He remembers groping her in the back of that van— Has he changed so much? Or has he simply given up trying so hard to pretend nothing’s wrong?

He takes a sheet of personalised stationary— much more vulgar in design than anything his father would tolerate— and a fabulously expensive looking fountain pen with him, writing the address down once he finds the street number and then the street sign amongst all the rubble, before deciding drawing a map might be a better idea. It’s not that easy without something to support the paper, no matter how thick it is or how rich the ink from the pen. He tries for a while, making a mess, before deciding to find something to rest it on. 

He’s picked up a tattered book from the masses of the things that have escaped the collapse of an apartment building when Diego grabs him. ‘You almost wrecked the map,’ he complains, wincing at the thick line of black ink awkwardly leading off his depiction the street that they’re walking down.

Diego doesn’t reply, just starts dragging him by the wrist. ‘Hey!’ he tries to pull his arm back. ‘What’s going on? Let me go.’ Diego does not let him go. ‘ _Let me go!_ ’ he repeats himself. 

Diego still doesn’t reply. Diego keeps dragging him. Something is wrong— He drops down, twisting his arm, trying to break the grip on his wrist— It doesn’t work. Diego is too strong— the other just shakes him like a dog shaking a rat and keeps dragging him into the shadowed wreckage of the fallen apartment building, dodging rubble until they reach the door of an almost intact apartment, him struggling the whole time, feeling bruises form around his wrist, feeling the bones grind together. At some point he drops the book, the map, the pen, his other hand going to his brother’s grip on him, trying to get his wrist free.

The door is hanging open a crack, Diego pushes it the rest of the way— there is the dead body of a woman just inside the door— Diego leans down, grabs it, and drags it back out into the hallway, before dragging him inside the apartment and slamming the door. 

Suddenly he’s slammed up against the wall near the door, Diego’s mouth on his, his brother’s hands on him, on his hips, his ass, his waist, pawing at him, groping at his flesh. He tries to get his own hands between them, to push Diego away, and when that doesn’t work starts hitting him, his shoulders, his neck, his head, but his brother doesn’t respond, and he can feel fingers clawing their way between the laces of his pants, probing at the slivers of bare skin there, and then another hand plunging down the back, fingers worming their way into his crack, rubbing savagely across his hole and he hears the distressed little sounds he’s making, trying to get Diego’s tongue out of his mouth, biting at him, but the man isn’t even responding—

And Diego pulls back to gasp in a breath, his eyes as black as pitch. ‘I’ve been good,’ his brother says, except it’s not his brother’s voice. ‘I’ve been really good Babydoll, I didn’t kill him, did I? And you did promise to treat me real sweet the moment you were back in that beautiful body of yours—’

He shakes his head, ‘No. No. No, no, no no nonono.’

_’Yes,_ ’ Jacques hisses, grabbing him by the same wrist and dragging him further into the apartment, no matter how hard he struggles, ‘Come on, there’s as bedroom this way, I scouted it out while you were all crying about the end of days.’

‘No,’ he says. No. This is not— he can’t. He can’t let this— ‘What’re you doing? Please don’t. Not this. Please don’t—’

‘When I’m done you’ll never let him touch you again,’ Jacques says, sounding oh-so pleased with himself. ‘Not that he’ll want to. I’m going to make sure he remembers this, remembers what a slut you are the moment someone treats you nice—I’m gonna treat you real nice Babydoll, I’m gonna make you come until you scream.’

‘Don’t do this,’ he pleads as Jacques drags him into the bedroom, throwing him onto the bed as if he weighs nothing. The ghost ignores him. ‘Please don’t do this.’ He’s not going to survive this.

‘Uptight boy like him, he’s gonna be so _disgusted,_ ’ Jacques muses, using Diego’s body to crawl up onto the bed and between his legs, pinning him down when he does his best to fight back. The other leans in close, those black eyes roaming his face, ‘It used to drive me insane, you know? Watching you with Dave. I wanted to rip his fucking throat out by the end of it.’

‘What?’ he mewls, pushing back into the bedding and trying to get as much space between them as he can.

Jacques lifts one of Diego’s hands to his face, runs a gently finger down his cheek. ‘I’ve watched you get fucked hundreds, _thousands,_ of times Dollface, I’ve worn the bodies of so many of those people all up inside of you, fucked you until you’ve passed out, until you’ve pissed yourself—’ the ghost leans down, pressed a kiss to his brow, soft, horrifyingly affectionate, ‘—and I didn’t care. Not one bit. But with Dave— he was so sweet with you, so good, so _gentle_ —’ a little, snorted laugh, ‘I’d never seen you get fucked so gently before. Never seen how you bloom so beautifully under that kind of attention, all that praise, being treated like you were a _wife_ and not something with less material value than the paper the person fucking you uses to wipe their ass—’ Jacques trails off, just looks at him for a long moment while he feels the tears run down his cheeks, ‘— I like you like that. It made me look at you and see something more than a toy. It just took a while for me to process it, but process it I have. I’m going to keep you, _forever._ I’m going to love you, take care of you, fuck you until you can’t even remember Dave’s name—’

‘Get off me!’ he snarls, momentarily getting an arm free, before Jacques grabs it again, forces it to the bed beside his head.

‘Tut, tut, tut, Darling,’ the ghost says. ‘As amusing as I’m finding this, it isn’t actually what I want from you. If you stop struggling I can be sweet to you, I can be just like Dave—’

‘You’re _nothing_ like him!’ he shouts in the ghost’s face. ‘He was _good_ man. Diego is a _good_ man. LEAVE HIM ALONE! You promised you wouldn’t hurt him!’

‘How is using his body to fuck you hurting him?’ the ghost asks. ‘If he had the sense to see what’s in front of him he would be _thanking_ me for letting his filthy hands touch something so far out of his league as your divine flesh.’

‘Get out of him!’ 

‘No.’

‘Please! Please! Just please, please just leave him alone, please don’t do this!’

Jacques grabs him by the shoulders and slams him back against the bed. ‘You’re being difficult Darling,’ the ghost snarls. ‘Let me just make things clearer for you, you either stop carrying on or I will take this—’ one of Diego’s knives appears in the ghost’s hand, ‘—and I will push it in deep and run it from here to here—’ the ghost runs the very tip of the blade across Diego’s throat, making a thin line of red well up, ‘—making sure I sever the carotid artery and bathing you in the lifeblood of your irritating brother. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he replies, voice very, very small. He feels himself start to go away again, lying back on the bed feeling weak, as if he can no longer even lift his arms to strike out at the ghost.

‘Good,’ the ghost replies, dropping the knife onto the bed beside them. He could reach out and grab it, but what would he do then? He can’t hurt Diego— maybe he could kill himself? His fingers twitch towards it, but then Jacques bats it away, giving him a dark look. ‘Naughty,’ the ghost chastises him. ‘Now what shall I do first? I remember how much you loved it when Dave ate you out—’

With that the ghost starts to move down the bed, pulling at his clothes, hiking his shirt up until it’s in his armpits so Jacques can use Diego’s mouth to press kisses across his flesh, Diego’s hands once more at his hips, his ass, groping at him, fingers once more worming their way into his pants through the gaps in the side. 

Oh. Oh, no. This is— he can’t. He _can’t._

_**Diego.** _

Every now and then a little sob escapes him, but he doesn’t want to give the ghost the satisfaction of hearing him cry properly. Still, he can barely see for all the tears. His flesh feels so cold, the press of Diego’s body against him burning hot, like a brand. He feels dizzy. Sick with dread and guilt. For a moment he’s in that dream, Dave in a pool of black, his sins escaping to taint, to kill, the other— except it’s not Dave, it’s Diego—

‘No,’ he mewls, can’t help himself, as he feels the other’s warm lips press to the flesh just above the arc of his pelvis on his left side. Jacques then tongues him there, purring in pleasure at the taste of his skin. No. No. He can’t— to do this to Diego—

His hands fly to Diego’s head, trying to entangle in the other’s short hair, to pull his head away, but he can’t get a grip. Jacques doesn’t seem to notice the rejection in the action, just rubs his face back and forth against the skin of his lower pelvis, sucking in deep breaths of the scent of him, Diego’s chin bumping up against the soft bulge of his cock— ‘No,’ he repeats, clawing his fingers, trying to grip—

He feels them sink in, sink into Diego’s head— No. Not. What? Not _into_ Diego’s head, through Diego’s head and into _Jacques._ His brother’s body spasms on top of him as his fingers sink in deeper, grab a hold of something, something— Jacques soul, or whatever it is. 

He feels it as the ghost starts to struggle, starts to fight back, but he’s got him now, he’s got him— ‘GET OUT OF HIM!’ he orders, dragging at whatever it is he’s caught, pulling Jacques’ translucent form—wriggling like a snake pinned on a spear— out of his brother’s body. ‘GET OUT OF HIM AND FUCK OFF!’ he roars, flinging Jacques away from the bed. _‘Fuck off and never come back!’_

Jacques vanishes.

There is a moment of complete silence, and then he hears, he feels, Diego pull in a ragged breath. His brother starts shaking, the next breath an evident sob. Feeling frozen he watches as Diego shakily pulls away from him, sits back on his heels, unable to make eye-contact— though a flush of relief suffuses him as one darted glance at his face and away shows those usual brown eyes. ‘I—’ Diego breaks off, abrupt, the words getting stuck in his throat. ‘Hhhhhhhhh-hurt you,’ eventually escapes. ‘A-Almost. I-I. Rrrrrrrrrr-rap—’ 

He feels it the moment his brother tenses to launch himself off the bed, and suddenly he knows that if Diego flees now their relationship will never recover. It will be broken. Diego may even be broken—

Not sure how he manages it he flings himself upright, wraps his arms around his brother, and buries his face against Diego’s back before the man can fully stand. ‘It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you,’ he rushes to reassure the other, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Diego makes a low, broken sound and shudders in his arms, and for a moment he thinks this is it, Diego is about to throw him off, is about to _hurt_ him for this, but then the other’s hands come up and close gently over his own, and Diego relaxes back onto the bed in his grasp. They’re both shaking now. Diego’s shaking, he’s shaking, and then his shakes become sobs, gasped out between each ‘I’m sorry,’ against Diego’s back.

Something shifts. They shift, The next thing he knows they’re lying on this stranger’s bed, him in Diego’s arms, him the one crying this time, sobbing against his brother’s neck, Diego making gentle shooshing sounds between his own tears— and it’s probably highly pathetic to look at, and unacceptably un-masculine for a man like Diego, but neither of them seems to care as he burrows in closer and Diego holds him tighter— eventually even dragging the blanket from the end of the bed and covering them both as they huddle together. He can’t stop apologizing, even when Diego tells him it’s not his fault. It is his fault. The other is going to _hate_ him when he knows. Hate him. Hate him. Hate him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasps out again.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: for childhood sexual assault, sexual assault in general, and internalised victim blaming. 
> 
> Only one more chapter to post after this, which I should do sometime this weekend. Thank you all, as always, for your lovely reception of this fic, the comments and the kudos, and for all being so understanding!

Eventually, wordlessly, they decide they’d better get back to the others. He feels very shaky, almost losing his balance as he gets to his feet, before Diego steadies him— steadies himself it seems, the two of them standing there for a moment propping each other up. He doesn’t know what’ll happen now. Somehow though he suspects he won’t be allowed to keep his secrets— not after Jacques possessed Diego.

The ghost still hasn’t returned, at least that’s something— 

He goes to pull away from his brother as they shuffle out of the apartment, sure the other must want some distance from him, but Diego grabs his arm— gently— and pulls him back close, so they’re walking side by side, arms brushing.

The sun has started setting while they were in the apartment so they step out into a twilight apocalypse, drifts of ash still falling, the sunset a deep and bloody red from all the crap in the atmosphere. It’s very quiet. Disconcertingly quiet.

‘We should head back to the brownstone,’ Diego says after a moment, ‘Five might have already found the others.’

He nods, and they totter off— both of them a bit weak on their feet.

He doesn’t realise he’s rubbing at the wrist Jacques fucked up until Diego reaches out and takes it, bringing it up into the weak light so the other can examine it. The bruises are dark, red shading into purple— spreading down to his fingers and up into his forearm, the joint itself swollen, sore, becoming stiff. Diego hisses in a breath. ‘You tried so hard to escape,’ the other muses, ‘I’m so fucking sorry I couldn’t get him to let go. I kept trying to. I could see how much he was hurting you.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he says, his own voice sounding weak. It was his fault. All of it. 

Diego gently lets go of his arm and they continue on. 

_Klaus._ What? Did he just hear something? He looks around, sees nothing but the empty, ravaged city.

They’re not far from the brownstone now— not that they were far to begin with. They barely got a block or two before Jacques decided to— _Klaus._

‘What?’ he snaps, whirling around, trying to see where that voice is coming from. 

A split second later Diego’s got a knife in each hand and is looking around just as desperately as he is. ‘Is it him?’ 

‘No,’ he says, shaking his head, _Klaus,_ ‘It’s not his voice— it’s—’

_Klaus_ **Klaus** Klaus _Klaus_ Klaus _**Klaus**_ _Klaus_ Klaus **Klaus** Klaus **Klaus** _**Klaus**_ Klaus Klaus Klaus _**Klaus**_ _Klaus_ Klaus **Klaus** _Klaus_ Klaus _Klaus_ Klaus **Klaus** KlausKlausKlaus Klaus _Klaus_ Klaus _KlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus_ Klaus **_Klaus_**

‘—it’s all the rest of them—'

They reach for him, all of them, begging him to help them, begging him to listen, screaming about all the things that were done to them, that they did, fear and sorrow and guilt and loss and lust and regret and — he raises his hands to his ears, whimpering, trying to block the sound out, the feel of their ghostly fingers clawing at him— ‘Leave me alone!’ he cries out. ‘Leave me alone.’

And then Diego is there, pulling him in close, tucking his head against the other’s neck. ‘It’s ok,’ his brother is saying, the voice almost drowned out by the wailing around him. ‘It’s ok, we’re almost back to the others.’

He’d forgotten how bad it was, and even if he hadn’t— they seem even more wound up than usual, as if Jacques’ preventing them from coming near him has left them frustrated and excitable. As one they stumble through the streets, his eyes clenched shut, his hands over his ears, trusting Diego to guide them, to get them back to the others safely— and then, over the sound of wailing ghosts, he hears it, the sound of Vanya— grown-up Vanya, shouting.

‘-all fucking with me! How fucking stupid was kid me? Huh? Thinking you all actually wanted to be my friends, be my _siblings,_ when it was nothing more than a way for you to manipulate me so that—’

‘It wasn’t like that!’ he hears Allison shout. ‘We were all so sorry. We all fucked up so much, we just wanted a chance to do it again, to do it _better_ —’

‘Like I am _ever_ going to believe a word that comes out of your mouth!’

‘Do _not_ talk to her like that!’ well that’s Luther, making things worse like usual.

‘Come on,’ he urges Diego, breaking away from the man and pulling him up the front path and into the brownstone, trying not to pay any attention to the ghosts he passes.

‘How are you going to stop me!’ Vanya, taunts, ‘Lock me away in that cell again? Huh?’

‘No!’ Luther bellows as he and Diego skid into the room, his eyes picking out his siblings, all present and accounted for— even Five— amidst the press of the ghosts. ‘That was a mistake,’ Luther is saying, ‘one that I deeply regret—’ except, of course, he’s stalking over to Vanya as he’s saying it, and she’s starting to pale to white, and—

He flings himself across the room, pushing aside the dead that reach for him, ignoring the exclamations and questions as to where he and Diego were, until he can skid to a stop in front of her. ‘Vanya,’ he says, and then ‘I am so fucking sorry,’ and he reaches for her, feels her hesitate, before she falls into his arms.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whimpers against his neck. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.’

He gestures for Allison, who shrugs Luther’s hand off her arm when he tries to hold her back, and then she’s there too, hugging Vanya, hugging him. ‘I know you didn’t mean to,’ he hears her whisper. ‘I’m so sorry I used my power on you.’

‘You were right—’ Vanya is crying. ‘About him. You were right the whole time and I hated it. I just wanted someone to love me for _me._ ’

‘We do,’ Allison reassures her. ‘We all do.’

‘Of course we do,’ he adds. ‘We were just too stupid, too self-involved— we’re all so sorry.’

‘Yeah, we are,’ that’s Diego, coming closer— and suddenly Ben is there too, and Luther after Allison hisses something at him that says he is going to be in trouble later, and then Diego is calling out ‘You too old man,’ and Five is grumbling, but edging towards them until he’s close enough for Luther to catch him and bring him into the awkward, teary and kind of hysterical Hargreeves family group hug.

Once everyone’s calmed down they end up sitting on the remarkably uncomfortable Chesterfield lounge suite and eating granola bars and drinking instant coffee made with bottled water— all scavenged from the kitchen. Vanya is tired of talking about herself, about what happened— and in truth none of the rest of them want to talk about it either. It’s not _fixed,_ not yet, but fixing it will take time— bit by bit they’ll have to put their relationships with her back together.  
Five is sitting across from him with Delores on his lap. Those wise and kind of terrifying old-man eyes in that young face fixed on him. He sits between Diego and Vanya, doing his best to keep his eyes closed and to not listen to all the shrieking of the twenty-odd ghosts packed into the room with them. ‘So what happened to you two?’ Five eventually asks. ‘Because they said you’d gone to leave me a message to tell me where you all were— but I didn’t see you anywhere while I was trying to find everyone.’

He feels as much as sees everyone’s gaze turn to him and hunches further in on himself. 

‘I think you need to explain what’s going on with that ghost,’ Diego says, eventually. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, but after what happened before— there has to be a way we can help you.’

‘What ghost?’ he hears asked, and ‘that black and white man?’ and ‘Jacques, that’s what he said his name was,’ from Five.

‘I don’t—!’ he blurts out, then swallows, and he’s so confused, and it’s all too late now, and what is he running from? and he might as well say it, rip off the bandaid, make them all _hate_ him once and for all. ‘I don’t deserve your help. It’s _my fault._ ’

‘How can it be your fault?’ Diego demands.

He takes a deep breath, trying to gather his thoughts, gaze catching on Vanya for a moment a memory of what she’s been through, locked up, in the dark— their father’s cruelty mirrored between them. 

‘If I have to talk about it,’ as if he has a choice at this point, ‘I don’t think Vanya should listen.’ What if it sets her off? Reminds her of what their father did to her?

‘Why?’ she asks, ‘Is it about me? Is it somehow my fault?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. It’s just—’ he’s shaking. Fuck. He feels like he’s going to shake apart.

‘Klaus!’ that’s Ben. ‘It’s ok, we will keep you safe—’

‘You _can’t,_ ’ he cries out, feeling the tears well up once more. ‘I don’t want you to hear Vanya because it might remind you and I don’t want you to get hurt anymore. I don’t want any of you to get hurt! And I can’t stop it happening! I make it happen!’

‘That, before, _that was not your fault,_ ’ Diego insists. 

‘It _is_ ’ he argues back. ‘That is all my fault. _Jacques_ is my fault. _I made a deal with him!_ ’

Then there’s an explosion of noise, of questions, of arguments, before Five’s voice cuts through the rest. **‘What deal?** Explain to me what the fuck is going on! Because I can’t plan properly to fix everything when there are variables _I don’t even know about_ running around!’

**_Time’s up._**

He pulls away from Diego, from Vanya, and sits forward on the edge of the Chesterfield. ‘When I was a kid,’ he begins, glancing at Vanya anxiously, before looking away, ‘Dad thought the best way to train me, to stop me being so afraid of the ghosts, was to lock me up in the mausoleum—’ he feels her gasp. Another glance shows her skin paling. He reaches out a little tentative, before pulling his hand back. Best to get it over with.

‘I think we all know now that my powers enable ghosts to physically manifest— though I don’t know if dad did at the time— I don’t think he did— what he said made me think he didn’t—’ he trails off. The memory of hands on him. Words whispered in his ear. How much it had hurt, and not just the first time—

‘Klaus?’ Vanya’s gentle voice brings him back to the present. 

‘I don’t know how I managed to attract the attention of this particular ghost, but I did, and he scared me so much I lost control of my powers so he could touch me—’

‘Jacques?’ Diego asks.

He shakes his head. ‘Another one. The ghost of a man who liked to—’ he swallows, can’t actually say the words, ‘— _hurt_ little boys,—’ at that he feels Diego get even tenser, as if such a thing was possible. ‘He was hurting me— my own fault, I know. My own powers—’ 

‘No!’ he hears but talks over it. Best to get it all out now.

‘And then one time Jacques turned up. While the other ghost was— well. He said he could stop the man from doing what he was doing, that the man would never do it again, that he’d stop the other ghosts from hurting me—’ he trails off, squeezes his eyes shut. Now to say it. ‘I just had to agree to be his from the moment I turned eighteen.’

‘Which you did,’ Diego says, not asks, voice unreadable.

He nods. ‘Which I did. So, you see, no one to blame but myself—’

‘No,’ he hears Diego protest, hears others talking, shouting, can’t make it all out the ghosts starting up as well, and then, suddenly, there’s a large figure dropping to their knees in front of him, large, warm hands taking his own. 

‘That was absolutely not your fault,’ Luther says, ducking down to meet his eyes. ‘Absolutely not. You were a child— That was _dad’s_ fault for putting you in that situation. That was the ghosts’ fault for hurting you. How can you blame yourself for doing what you thought you had to to make someone stop hurting you?’

He tries to argue. Of course it’s his fault. Why can’t they see that? He brings up other things that have happened to him, times people, mainly _men,_ have hurt him, all the things he did to make it happen, but no one is listening. No one is agreeing with him. They’re just telling him he’s wrong. That they don’t blame him— and before he knows it Vanya has pulled him into her arms and he’s resting there as she mutters about what an asshole their dad was, is, was, and Diego is sitting next to him, head bowed, muttering about what a monster their father is, and what a monster all those men were, and Allison has leaned over Vanya and is resting a hand on his leg, shaking her head, saying ‘No. No baby. That’s not your fault, none of that’s your fault,’ and Ben is sitting alone in the wingback chair, head in his hands, every now and then saying something like ‘I can’t believe you blame yourself for that. If you’d just _told me_ I would have told you how wrong you were,’ and Five is pacing back and forth in front of the lounge, and Luther is still holding his hands, and he understands none of this, none of it at all, and it keeps happening until—

‘ _What the fuck happened to your wrist?_ ’ the blond asks. 

From what feels like very far away he sees Luther raise the injured limb to the light, gently turning it back and forth to get a good look. ‘That was me,’ Diego says, voice full of shame, but before Luther can complete his lurch to his feet to do whatever awful thing he obviously wants to do, he catches him— feeling his fingers dig into the other man’s top, feeling the slide of skin and firm muscle and the tangle of hair beneath the cloth.

‘ _Jacques possed him!_ ’ he snaps. ‘What happened was not Diego’s fault.’

‘I don’t get it,’ says Ben. ‘Until earlier I had never seen that ghost before, even when I was dead and spending most of my time with you—’

‘He used to hide from you,’ he answers the unspoken question, relaxing his grip on Luther when he feels the other sink back down onto his heels, the threat to Diego abating. ‘Anyway, back then he wasn’t hanging around me so much.’

‘What changed?’ Five asks, eyes intense, obviously still trying to work out how much of a problem Jacques is. 

He doesn’t know how to answer. The answer seems obscene. To bring Dave into it—

‘He got jealous,’ Diego answers for him. 

‘Jealous of who?’ Allison demands. 

‘Klaus’ boyfriend,’ Diego says, giving him an apologetic smile. ‘He didn’t like how nice Dave was to him.’

‘Is he going to be a problem, this Jacques?’ Five asks. ‘Where is he now?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘Somehow I pulled him out of Diego and told him to fuck off and I haven’t seen him since,’ he laughs, a little ruefully, eying the crying form of a woman whose throat is ringed with black bruises and who keeps pacing back and forth through Five as if she doesn’t even notice he’s there. ‘I think he might actually be gone for now. The other ghosts have come back—'

Five nods, looking contemplative. ‘Do you think you can get rid of him again if he comes back?’

He shrugs, helplessly. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Ok, ok,’ Five nods again. ‘Ok. If he does you have to try. Don’t argue, just do everything you can to get rid of him—’ his brother pauses for a moment, contemplative ‘—At this point I don’t know what else we can do in the past, since I’m pretty sure the Commission aren’t just going to let us keep fucking around with the timeline, so there’s a couple of things I need to do, then I’m going to take us back.’

‘Back to when?’ Luther asks.

‘Back to the day dad died,’ Five answers. ‘Now Vanya, I need you to come with me.’

‘What?’ she squeaks. ‘Why?’

‘You’re part here and you’re part there,’ he answers, not that it makes much sense. ‘I went back to just after the briefcase exploded and everyone other than you and me are still there, once more their child selves— and since we need you not to disappear on the same day I did, I think I have to take you back.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she says.

‘Don’t worry,’ he replies, ‘I’m not sure I do either. Come on.’

‘Let me say goodbye to everyone first,’ she pleads, and when he agrees she does so, hugging Allison tight and sharing a whispered conversation, then Ben— the words ‘I missed you so much,’ audible in her voice, then she leans over and hugs Diego gently, before turning her attention to him. 

‘If kid me forgets everything that happened in these last few days, if he’s a little asshole again, promise me you’ll try and be his friend anyway,’ he whispers against her neck as she pulls him into a tight hug. ‘He needs a friend like you.’

‘I promise,’ she says, and ‘and _you_ promise _me_ you’ll stop thinking all those things you told us about are your fault. They are not your fault.’

He makes a noncommittal noise, but promises her, even if he doubts he can keep it, when she slaps him gently on the arm and gives him a serious look. And then it’s just her and Luther.

The blond glances at Allison for help, and when she just gives him a _look_ he says. ‘I am sorry. I know I fucked up— it’s just. You _hurt_ Allison—’

‘And you love her,’ Vanya says, nodding knowingly. 

Luther flushes pink. ‘Yes,’ he says, looking a bit uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry. I’m always going to love her more than anyone else in the world, and I can’t stand to see her hurt— but still, I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did.’

‘I understand why you did,’ Vanya says, ‘but still, I don’t think I forgive you just yet—’

Luther nods, looking a bit ashamed. ‘I do understand, I mean, I don’t think I should give myself the credit for it. Allison helped me understand.’

After that Vanya hugs their sister one last time before walking over to Five. He nods at her. Says, ‘Missed you. Sorry about all the bullshit—’ and then they vanish in a pulse of blue light. 

After that there’s an awkward silence. Eventually they go back to eating their granola bars and drinking terrible cold coffee, and after a while Allison tries to talk to him about how everything’s not his fault, but he doesn’t want to deal with it right now— mainly he just wants to sleep— and somehow he ends up in one of the bedrooms with Diego— because the other is now hovering protectively again, in between spasms of unnecessary guilt— and they end up curled up again on a totally different bed— though at least no one’s crying this time— and falling into something of a daze. 

Five returns in the early hours of the morning, dragging them all out of bed— Luther and Allison appearing in the hall rather more disheveled and red about the mouth than they were last time they were seen— Allison walking a little funny— not unexpected. Luther is a big boy, after all.

They all hold hands like last time, Diego’s fingers intertwined with his own, Ben on his other side— as the world goes blue—

Around his neck Dave’s dog tags become heavier, heavier, heavier— his grip almost slipping from Ben’s to grab for them— and then the weight vanishes. The world vanishes. They vanish.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so after this the fic is officially on hiatus. I would like to thank you all, so very, very much, as I do every chapter, for being such a wonderful audience, for reading it in the first place, for leaving comments and kudos and for all you have done to make me feel appreciated. I'm not sure when, or if, I'll ever get back to this story, but I have enjoyed writing it and hope you've all enjoyed reading it.

He wakes in his bed in the apartment he shares with Vanya and for a moment he is two separate people. He is two pasts. And then the two blend and he is both with no idea of where the boundary between one ends and the other begins.

He sits up, looks around the room— it’s a not a big room, but it’s comfortable. There’s art on the walls he hasn’t seen before but that he likes the moment he sets eyes on it and also knows he chose because it appealed to him. The bedframe is antique, black and gold brass, only a double— and he can remember the little antique shop he bought it in, like he can remember spotting the eccentric, mainly black quilt he’s lying under at a fleamarket. 

He pushes back the quilt, gets out of bed, realises he’s naked. There’s the robe— silk, Japonesque but not actually a Kimono, all in shades of peach and embroidered with cranes and flowers— hanging off the back of the real Victorian screen decorated with Silhouettes over by the window. He shrugs the robe on, feels the silk brush his bare skin— glances down, reassured, at the tattoos on his palms. 

He pads barefoot out into the kitchen to find Vanya sitting at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee. She’s already made him one in his favourite mug— something in the style of Clarice Cliff that he bought from the potter when they went to visit her studio last spring. He lifts it to his lips, sipping the hot liquid doctored exactly as he likes it. 

‘Helen Cho is in my bed,’ Vanya says as he cradles the coffee close to his chest.

He nods, of course she is, the two women have been going out for the last six months— but the other part of him asks, ‘Who?’

‘She was first chair of the orchestra. Leonard killed her,’ Vanya says, and then ‘That _bastard_ , I see him again and I’m going to fucking kill _him_ —’ a slightly awkward pause, ‘—again.’

Helen is a sweet woman, a little reserved until you get to know her— terrible parents, always critical, hate the fact that she’s a lesbian— he can remember meeting them accidentally once, when he and the two women had gone out to dinner and discovered them at the same restaurant. He’d been wearing this cute little red lace number— they had not been impressed. Helen had spent half the night apologizing to him— when she wasn’t crying, Vanya curled around her, trying to make it better— and yet he has never met Helen Cho before in his life. 

‘Oh, this is a headfuck,’ he says, sinking down onto the barstool next to Vanya.

‘You take your medication yet?’ she asks him.

‘No, I’ve got a client at nine—’ the ghosts have already warned him this is one of those amateurs that go around trying to debunk psychics— hidden cameras and trick questions and all that— huh? He shakes his head, lifting one hand to rub over his eyes. For one moment he doesn’t know if he’s a homeless junkie or Vanya’s flatmate the professional psychic— but then, he’s both, isn’t he? One thing in one life, the other thing in this one. 

This one where his father had developed medication that he could take to quieten the ghosts when their screams became too disruptive, where he hadn’t had to turn to the drugs and the drink to find some peace, so he could sleep if he wanted, so eventually he could feel safe and confident enough to conjure them without fearing he’d never be able to escape them, where his friendship with Vanya had continued, where they’d supported each other through all sorts of hardship, ended up living together, where— ‘Ben!’ he yelps, flinging himself off the chair and scurrying to the phone. He dials the number by rote, waiting through the ring, the ring, ‘Hello?’ a female voice answers.

‘Hey Padma, could you put Ben on?’

‘Klaus?’ she sounds mildly irritated. ‘It’s not even six yet—’

He hears the sound of the phone being taken from her, and then Ben’s voice ‘Klaus!’

‘Ben!’ he sighs, relieved, feeling his legs almost go out from under him. ‘You’re alive.’

He sees Vanya’s hand raise to her throat, hears her mutter ‘Oh thank Christ.’

‘This is so fucking weird,’ Ben says, and then ‘I’m coming around yours. I’ll take the day off work.’

‘Oh,’ he coos, letting himself sink down to the floor, resting against the wall. ‘You have a job.’

Not just a job— ‘I have a fiancée,’ Ben whispers, excited, down the phone, ‘and I’m about to have a kid!’

‘This is amazing,’ he says. ‘Vanya isn’t it amazing. Ben’s going to be a dad!’

He hears her sniff, sees her raise a hand to wipe a tear from her cheek. ‘Do you think Allison, Patrick and Claire will make it to the baby shower?’ she asks, and then frowns. ‘Oh.’

‘Oh,’ he echoes. Poor Luther. Luther who is still stuck in that house with their father and Pogo and Mom— 

There is a knock on the door, and then Diego’s voice calls out ‘Detective Hargreeves reporting for doughnut duty,’ like always when he comes around with a box from Griddy’s, but this time ‘Please, for fuck’s sake Klaus, Vanya, open the door so I can see the two of you are alright.’

‘Diego’s here,’ he tells Ben as Vanya goes to open the door. 

‘Ok, I’ll let you go,’ his brother replies, ‘but I’ll be over there soon, ok?’

‘Ok,’ he says, and then ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ Ben says, then hangs up. 

‘Ben’s coming over,’ he says, just before Vanya opens the door.

‘Fuck, look at the two of you—’ Diego says, coming in with his Griddy’s box.

‘Look at _you,_ ’ Vanya replies while he’s too busy being speechless. Diego looks _good._ Happy, healthy, very, very fit— and dressed in a nice suit, looking every inch what he is— one of the city’s best cops. Partner to Detective Eudora Patch.

‘I got you chocolate,’ Diego tells Vanya, ‘And a cream filled for you Princess—’ there’s a slight skip after that, the familiar nickname suddenly foreign, before the moment passes and Diego says ‘—and for Helen too. She still in bed?’

He watches Vanya flush pink, the memory of Helen Cho eating a cream filled doughnut suddenly crossing everyone’s mind. That woman is occasionally unconsciously entirely too sexy— not his type— but from the glazed look on Vanya’s face she’s as much this new Vanya’s type as she was the old Vanya’s type.

‘This is so fucking weird,’ Diego says as they all crowd around the counter and eat the doughnuts, sipping on coffee. ‘I’m not getting it wrong, right? Misremembering. Five is still gone? Or maybe I should say gone again?’

They nod. In both sets of memories Five disappeared on that day when they were thirteen— in one after arguing with their father, in the other after the Academy was attacked and something exploded— the briefcase they know with their adult minds. 

‘Oh, hi Diego,’ Helen’s sleepy voice calls out as she pads from Vanya’s bedroom, belting her own—much more simple— dove-grey silk robe over the little lacy pyjamas they all know she wears when she’s here. ‘Cream filled?’

‘Cream filled,’ their brother confirms, nudging the box over to her. She picks up the doughnut and takes an entirely unnecessarily sensual bite out of it, laughing a little as the filling escapes and smears across her cheek. 

Vanya shudders beside him, eyes on Helen’s mouth. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ the woman asks, wrapping her arms around Vanya’s neck for a moment, before stealing her coffee and taking a deep sip. She sighs, stretches, the silky cloth sliding over her body in a way he can see is distracting the hell out of his sister, ‘My shoulders are so stiff. We should go to that place and get a massage after practice.’

‘Yes,’ Vanya mumbles, staring at her girlfriend. ‘Practice.’

Helen finishes the doughnut, and Vanya’s coffee, and then says ‘I’ll take first shower,’ slinking off with all eyes on her. 

‘She was not like that in the other world,’ their sister says, a little helplessly. ‘Like, I think she actually hated me.’

‘She does not,’ he argues, remembering times when it had just been him and Helen, Vanya off doing all sorts of things. The way the woman had spoken of their sister— the admiration, the love in her voice, and frustration, because she knows Vanya is a better violinist than her, but seems satisfied to take second place because she wants Helen to shine—and how confusingly patronising and wonderful and unexpected and lovely Helen finds it all. 

‘I feel like I’m lying to her,’ Vanya says with a sigh, ‘and I haven’t even really said anything to her. I feel like our whole relationship is a lie.’

They both reassure her it’s not— which is when the phone rings. Vanya goes over to pick it up, ‘Oh hey, Pogo,’ she says, and then gets very very quiet. Eventually she says ‘We’ll be there. I promise. We’ll be right there. Yes, me and Klaus and Diego and Ben— he’s on his way over,’ before hanging up. ‘Dad’s dead,’ she says, looking at them with a serious expression. ‘Pogo says he’s been murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ they echo. ‘Not pretending to be murdered?’ he asks for clarification.

She shakes her head, ‘He just said murdered.’

‘Oh.’

And then Vanya asks him, ‘Do you want to ring Andrei? Do you want him there?’

And then he remembers that he has a boyfriend that in one life he had lived with for a few weeks, a boyfriend who made fantastic Osso Bucco, but in this life has been with for almost four months, and his hand goes to his throat, to Dave’s dog tags— except they’re not there.


End file.
